Carillon Magazine

Reviews from the magazine

Issue 18

 

Morocco Rococo

By Jane McKie

Cinnamon Press

64p £7.99 ISBN 9781905614073

Reviewed by Carol Thistlethwaite

 

This is a collection of short poems from various places including North Africa, Scotland and Sussex. No big issues tackled here. We experience the places, the moments but only rarely the people. Despite the geographical distance, the journeys here are mostly internal. But that’s not to discredit the collection. In fact, the more I settled into it, the more I enjoyed it.

 Many poems are layered. ‘Crocodile Fashion’ is as much about growing up as paddling. ‘The Bosham Bell’ is both about a relationship and a bell sunk into the salt marsh:

 

A womanly bell, I sit beyond the low tide-line

with bunched fists, unwilling to be rescued.

My predicament

 

is centuries old.

 

One of my favourite poems is the imaginative ‘Fancy Dress’ which holds together a memory of dressing up, scripture and two continents:

 

Our pond had no fringe of bull-rushes,

but we heard it whisper about slyly

concealed baskets; heard it wish

for black kohl to line its ordinary eye

 

with intricate pattern. While it coveted

our reflections, we fished for frogs

in its weed. Laughing, dripping with Egyptian beads.

 

The poet uses eye, nose, tongue and ear to capture snapshots. What I enjoy most are the imaginative leaps she makes, such as in ‘Crabwise’