Watching for Smoke Helen Heath (Seraph Press, 2009) RRP $20 ISBN: 978-0-473-15379-3

Laurice Gilbert

The first thing you notice about this delicious hand-bound chapbook, fastened with a recycled knitting needle, is the intensely sensuous nature of the book itself. Its textured cover and creamy paper stock are highly appropriate for the sensory nature of the 11 poems held within.

In a limited edition of only 100 (mine is number 87), this is the first collection by an accomplished poet, prior to studying for an MA in Creative Writing from the IIML, who has been building her poetry credentials for some years. Helen Heath was the administrator of the NZPS before the committee positions were combined in the job of National Coordinator, and she has a modest publishing history.

The opening poem is an old friend; I was present when she wrote it at a Victoria University poetry workshop with the grand title, ‘Sex, Religion and Politics'. ‘Spilt' explores the first of these:

 
The touch of your hand on my
breast brings little needles and
I let down first just a drop, another drop ...
 

- an apt start to a collection that covers love and parenthood, home and family, not always happily. From ‘I killed my mother':

 
... and wishing
her away, cutting her out
of photos with a pair
of nail scissors...
 

‘Infallible father' suggests the paternal relationship was more satisfying: "Every question had an answer/ even in chaos."

The poems are commentaries on the important details in the poet's life, with universal resonance, as good poems often are. In ‘Diving' she notices,

 
wild oregano fresh from rain,
and iris flowers the size
of your smallest fingernail,
the goats bleating: maa.
 

as she waits at  the foot of a death bed, "laid out flat,/ eyes open."

Having travelled from reproduction to end-of-life, the collection ends with ‘How we disappear', a series of 3-line thoughts, memories, observations, rather like that writing exercise where you read through what you've written and underline particularly interesting or reverberant fragments, for use as source material. Nevertheless, they make a sort of chronological sense that neatly sums up the loss of self that sometimes accompanies family life.

Such a short collection almost asks to be quoted in full; the first read-through is very quick. But it rewards re-reading, like watching a favourite movie - there's still more to see the second time round.

Heath's first full collection, Graft, her MA project, has been accepted by VUP for publication in 2012. I can't wait.

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