Pindrop Press Home Page

Struck
by Anna Saunders
£8.99 (pub. 2014)

 

Struck Reviews


"Struck is an intricate weave of images held before reality, its threads pulled together by a recurrent series of physical materials and ideas – birch, skin, writing, above all silk which describes the weave itself. There is too a sustained symbolism of colour – of brown and blue and grey – a symbolism which, though it never hangs heavy over the poems, is nevertheless strong enough to cope with the weightiest subjects: love, physical nature, violence and – in a powerful and lucid closing sequence about the poet's father – death. Not a single image or symbol is wasted or forgotten. What stays with you at the end is not so much the subjects or the myths the poems draw on – Danae, Zeus, Van Gogh, the figures from Chagall, compelling as those are, – as the astonishingly original and fresh technique of a poet of quite remarkable gifts."

Bernard O'Donoghue, poet


Birch

She traces his spine with a hot finger,
calls it a sapling,
says his metatarsal bones
resemble raised roots.

He finds heart-shaped leaves
with double teeth
flattened in a drawer,
last year's gold leaves
latticed in lingerie.

She scrutinises sharp buds
on slender shoots,
smoothes dangling catkins
between finger and thumb.

He catches her licking sap
surreptitiously,
stripping sheet-white bark
in a slow reveal.

She weeps at the idea
of lumber and pulp,
learns in Latin
Betula pendula.

He rips the axe
from the stump,
wipes the blade clean.

 

(from Struck)

Struck

Delivery options (P&P included):
 

 


 

Copyright © 2016 Pindrop Press - All Rights Reserved

 

 

Home About Our Poets Bookshop Subnissions Contact