{"id":4056,"date":"2023-02-20T12:15:44","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T12:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/?page_id=4056"},"modified":"2023-02-20T12:18:21","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T12:18:21","slug":"sue-kindon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/sue-kindon\/","title":{"rendered":"Possibly a Pomegranate, reviewed by Sue Kindon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review in The High Window, Spring 2023<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2018Fatty \/ passion pussy \/ sexy seed bed \/ and eternal mother\u2019. The opening lines of the poem entitled \u2018Venus of Willendorf\u2019, startling as they are, serve as a pertinent introduction to the subject matter of Alwyn Marriage\u2019s latest collection (although, I must confess, I resorted to Google to discover the identity of the Venus in question).<\/span><\/p>\n

This poem, hiding towards the end of the book, for me exudes pomegranate, a fruit which has long been symbolic of fertility and abundance on account of its plentiful seeds. Written about by poets as diverse as D H Lawrence, Kahlil Gibran, and Eavan Boland, it is a fruit associated often with love and fecundity. And of course, there is the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, in which Persephone is bound to the underworld for certain months of the year because she has eaten of its pomegranate seeds.<\/span><\/p>\n

The enigmatic title of the 94-page Possibly a Pomegranate is as rich as the colour of the fruit, carrying as it does all these associations, and the poem of the same name takes us back to the Garden of Eden itself. The female figure in these page is often unclothed, with glimpses of breasts, and sensuously textured hair and skin.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Celebrating Womankind\u2019 is the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin subtitle. Many of the poems have appeared previously in a wide array of magazines, e-zines, and anthologies, so some seemed familiar, and I was pleased to be reacquainted with them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first section, \u2018SOMEWHERE A CHILD\u2019, opens gently with poems about childhood \/ motherhood. The first poem, \u2018Saturday\u2019s Child\u2019 embraces a span of ages:<\/span><\/p>\n

Somewhere a child leaps from bed, remembering<\/span>
\njust in time to open eyes<\/span>
\nbefore tumbling into morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dozing, an old woman tries to shift position; wracked<\/span>
\nwith pain, she rolls and groans, surprised, and none too pleased<\/span>
\nto see another day.<\/span><\/p>\n

and concludes:<\/span><\/p>\n

I feel the first faint flutter in my womb.<\/span><\/p>\n

The poems in this section speak of the poet\u2019s childhood and schooldays, including the traditionally rhymed and self-critical \u2018The Cruelty of Schoolgirls\u2019:<\/span><\/p>\n

We mocked you, Looney, for your far-fetched claims<\/span>
\nthat your brother was a pop-star and your father rich,<\/span>
\nbut I\u2019m sorry that I used to call you names.<\/span>
\nThe memory of what you must have suffered shames<\/span>
\nme into realising I was a schoolgirl bitch.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes the child is a daughter or granddaughter, so various relationships are explored.<\/span><\/p>\n

Section two is \u2018PRIMROSE TIME\u2019. Poems of adolescence, going out into the world, discovering physical love; not without humour, as in the (mistaken) speculation on the meaning of the name of the restaurant called \u2018La Matelote\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018WOMAN IN THE MIRROR\u2019 reflects on the female body, clothed and unclothed, including a beautiful poem entitled Menses, and, written in the specular form, \u2018Speculate\u2019 , which muses about ageing, a theme that haunts this collection throughout. After all the experiences she had weathered in life, the woman in \u2018Childproof\u201d discovered that:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026what finally drove her to distraction,<\/span>
\npersuaded her that she was old and feeble,<\/span>
\nwas the inability to open jars and bottles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, in \u2018Un-naming\u2019, a friend feels no grief for her elderly mother\u2019s death until she unpicks the name-tags from the no longer required clothes. Little things which might seem trivial take on huge significance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018CRISS-CROSS THE LABYRINTH\u2019: This section starts with an amusing tale about visiting a Henry Moore sculpture (several poems feature sculptures) in Dumfries and Galloway, then progresses to well-observed pieces about dementia, loss, old age, and death. In \u2018Lost Scents\u2019, AM wonders, in a moment of heightened awareness:<\/span><\/p>\n

Is it possible<\/span>
\nthat joys restored are wafting over you<\/span>
\nin a dimension I can no more see<\/span>
\nnow, than you could smell then.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018WINDS OF HISTORY\u2019 presents a gallery of strong women, some better known than others. Cleopatra rubs shoulders with, among others, Hildegard (von Bingen, I presume), Lot\u2019s wife, and a probably fictitious female pope. I had a happy half hour researching the back story for Elizabeth Prettijohn of the \u2018Pebbles at Hallsands\u2019 poem, a poignant lyric narrative of loss ending in a wonderful image:<\/span><\/p>\n

and I will hold this stony outcrop<\/span>
\nin solitary bitterness<\/span>
\nuntil salt water bleaches<\/span>
\nmy bones white,<\/span>
\ntell the story to the gulls and fulmars,<\/span>
\nspread my indignation like a cormorant\u2019s wings<\/span>
\ndrying in the relentless winds<\/span>
\nof history.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018RP RIP\u2019 is for Rosa Parks, and the rebellious spirit is also commended, earlier in the book, in Nancy, rebel of the primary school classroom, and in an imagined Tracy Emin as a teenager refusing to make her bed. There is bravery in the accounts of a handicapped skier, a refugee, and Grace Darling,<\/span><\/p>\n

These are accessible poems that benefit from being read aloud. Most are in free verse; a few take a concrete form, where appropriate rather than for the sake of it. Marriage shows us that she is at home with the villanelle and the sonnet, and I\u2019ve already given an honourable mention to the specular or mirror poem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alwyn Marriage\u2019s take on all things female is an honest one. It isn\u2019t a battle cry for strident feminism, more a sensitive observation of the nature of women in all their flavours, and an appreciation of their achievements, great and small. Seeds of the pomegranate.<\/span><\/p>\n

The last lines of the final poem, \u2018Whale\u2019, could be seen as a replete summing-up:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026What can I share<\/span><\/p>\n

with a life so unimaginably huge?<\/span>
\n\u2013 a vulnerability to wounds,<\/span>
\nred blood that drains a life away,<\/span>
\nthe joyous instinct<\/span>
\nthat nurses the fruit of our bodies<\/span>
\nwith the tenderness of milk.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sue Kindon<\/strong> lives and writes in the French Pyrenees. She recently gained French nationality, but does not intend to forsake the language of her birth. She was Runner Up in the 2021 Ginkgo Prize (for Eco-poetry). Her latest pamphlet is Outside, the Box<\/em> (4Word Press, 2019).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review in The High Window, Spring 2023 \u2018Fatty \/ passion pussy \/ sexy seed bed \/ and eternal mother\u2019. The opening lines of the poem entitled \u2018Venus of Willendorf\u2019, startling as they are, serve as a pertinent introduction to the subject matter of Alwyn Marriage\u2019s latest collection (although, I must…<\/p>\n

Continue readingPossibly a Pomegranate, reviewed by Sue Kindon<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4056","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4056"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4059,"href":"https:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4056\/revisions\/4059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marriages.me.uk\/alwyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}