Little Rock Rosetta Allan; illustrated by Martin Popplewell (Boheme, 2007) ISBN 976-0-473-11791-7 $28
Available from:rosall@xtra.co.nz
Bernard Gadd / Laurice Gilbert
This is the author's first collection of poems. The topics are drawn from her own life and the world and society around her, as in 'The Desert Road to Hawkes Bay', 'Love Marketed', 'His Time', and the poems' length ranges from short lyrics to works of several pages. It opens, before even the dedication and the table of contents, with the title poem:
A LITTLE ROCK
can soak in the warmth of the palm of a hand,
ripple the surface of a pond,
or break glass windows.
which goes on to a satisfyingly surprising ending, via further concrete details. However, this sense of thing-ness is not sustained, and too many of the poems are reflective rather than illustrative. The book suggests a writer with little familiarity with contemporary poetry. There are even a few lines using ‘do' as in "the face that once did shine". More noticeable is the employment of abstractions: the mundane surround of chores ...the immediate need of children ...the noise of technology. Many of Allan's images are too abstract to be really engaging, and the frequent religious references also tend to act in this distancing fashion.
The risk inherent in releasing a first collection comprising poems written over a decade, as Allan has done here, is that it will include un-reworked poems from the earliest stages of the poet's development. Nevertheless, every now and then Allan pushes the wordiness aside and gives us little, spare, sometimes wryly enjoyable pieces:
Something
on the tele
No-one
on the phone
Food
in the cupboard
Gas
in the car
And knowing
the mortgage
will go through
tonight.
(Friday Night Bliss)
Or lines when the abstractions and church vocabulary work well too:
I want to cleanse my world in the washer . . .
Clean, renewed and sanctified -
alas I'll have to wear her
(Life Cycle)
or a sudden brevity: "I need my bra! / Where is it?"
There are poetic moments that are not sustained through the poems, but show that the potential is there:
For the last sleep train left while I tossed in bed
(Day Break)
I remember travelling ladies / bright eyes, guilty feet
(Suddenly Older)
I heard the music / it cleared a path / to my ears...
(Pink Tutus & Fur Elise)
The poems' titles are cleverly thought out and intriguingly apt, though one successful poem has the simple title 'Home'. With its pleasing alliteration and mysterious horses, it has a simplicity missing from some of the longer narrative poems in the book. Both concrete and specific, it still leaves space for the imagination of the reader.
HOME
Living on a precipice
among a parade of precarious trees.
White horses try to climb
the face, but they're hooved.
And the moon's reflection shimmies
with celestial beings at night.
This beautifully presented collection shows an emerging poetic voice that is, as yet, a little undercooked. Now that she's taken the step of getting her work into the public eye, hopefully Allan will go on with the job she has started, of refining and solidifying her images.
