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Oh this is fine wine! None of you homogenised strawberry
milk shake siphoned through a plastic stick whilst perched on you table for
one next to the toilets at MacDonald's here. No a delicate fragrance with a
rich sophisticated body: I'll let the poetry do the work for me here:
Watchet
blue lias
rock
the cliffs
ÔWatchet-blue'
Celtic Venture
from Lisbon
takes lumber back
Thursday
nostalgia of
wallflowers
that
estuarine smell /
A beautiful picture of colour and life:
Stinking Iris (Iris Foetidissima)
Kilve
sea- cliff &
a green confluence of
waters
dragged leaves
of flower-de-luce
cut your smile
in slices of salt light
under a fossil
triturate, I conceal
charred letters
for you to dis Ð
cover
/
There is something of Laurie Lee in these works in the use of colour and
setting. And there is more than just beauty - although beauty will do: there
is a deeper psychological element:
Lachrimatory
opened the door
found my soul stuffed
full of dead wings
the solace, at least
of lifting one's head
out here in the open //
angel of broken marriages
old photographs
all those dead letters sent //
Elizabeth is also acutely concerned with language:
Portrait of Anne Buhre
weaving
the fabric of the poem
around her mystery; //
impasto
of September's greens and auburns, adrift
on an up draught //
luteal days, on the cusp
of autumn's menses
the impenetrable dissimulations of the heart.
Elisabeth Blestoe's poetry is a mixture of the unusual and the verging
experimental. Modernist by intent and bridging duality of leanings. This work
rejoices in colour and place and is formed in a refreshing independence of
style. There is a deep symbolism in her work that is centred in the primal
existential. And there is a love of language and language for its own sake.
Nice.
©
James McLaughlin 2010
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