My Iron Spine Helen Rickerby (HeadworX, 2008) RRP $20 ISBN 978-0-473-13596-6

Anne Harré

Helen Rickerby’s first collection, Abstract Internal Furniture (HeadworX 2001), was described as ‘an avant-garde, indoor garden full of strange images and intriguing ideas where things turn topsy-turvy’ (Harvey McQueen, New Zealand Books). She was a co-founder of, and now runs, the small publishing company Seraph Press.    

           Rickerby’s second collection My Iron Spine is an intriguing combination of poems. It is split into three sections and touches on deeply personal, deeply felt images and events. The first section, lilts along; entitled ‘Flashes of déjà vu’, it explores the realities and mysteries of childhood, what it means to be a child to see the world in a confused yet totally logical manner. The images are, at times, sublimely beautiful, yet manage to convey a deceptive naivety. In the poem ‘Grows on trees’ Rickerby writes,” the day/my brother told me/ that leaves could be used/ as money/ was the wealthiest day/ of my life”. In ‘Cold War, 1986’ she begins with, “When the US bombed/ Libya, I thought/ it was the end of the world”. In a later poem, ‘Curtains’, an older voice reverts to being a child and observes the mortality of her parents: 

 

they’ll never be slowed

or stymied by dodgy

hips or feet or hearts

…

I believe my parents will always be together

like a pair of curtains

that overlap

at their edges.

 

            Ultimately the poems in this first section work because they are personal. It is the personal voice of the poet that cuts through deceptively simple narrative and grabs the reader’s attention through to the end.

            The second and third sections, for me, did not have the power and depth of the first. The second section titled ‘Corsets and Comforts’, and third ‘Laughing at Ophelia’, look at the imagined lives of famous women. Emily Bronte, Sylvia Plath, Katherine Mansfield and Marie Curie (amongst others) make an appearance. While entertaining, they don’t hold the same sway as the first section. There is something verging on the frivolous that detracts from the writing, and subject matter. ‘Housework with Linda and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’: “‘whatever is a Roomba?’ asks Lizzie/ quizzically/ ‘A robotic vacuum cleaner, like a turtle/ that scoots around your room/ sucking the dust out of your carpet’”.

            This is alongside the quite lovely ‘Emily Dickinson at Home’:

 

the pane of glass cool against her palms

as she pauses, mid-sentence –

to watch what the world is doing

then a turn – a return

to her desk in her room

her almost whole world

Her room, an embrace

an encasement

…

the boundaries of her circumference

But from here she can navigate

further than she has travelled

further than she can see.

 

            Overall, though, this is an accomplished collection. Rickerby has a strong poetic voice that draws the reader in and is well worth a read and a re-read.

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