Review by Karen Powell-Curtis of "Have they marked you with arrows?" by Jayne Stanton

Jayne Stanton’s beautifully crafted poems chart the stages in her journey beginning with her cancer diagnosis, through treatment, and beyond. 

In "Recall," there is a sense of both fear of the outcome, and of the stress of waiting. The repetition of "a woman" controls the pace of the poem, and the detail of each step of the appointment forces the reader to pause and consider each action. In the following poem, "After the appointment," Stanton writes of the shock and disorientation immediately after diagnosis with the lines "You try to recall what you’ve just been told" and "You both agree – the cafeteria / seems farther away than usual." 

There are hints of Emily Dickinson’s poem "Hope is the thing with feathers" in "Many-feathered." In Stanton’s poem hope is "a scalpel in a steady hand" and "an evicted ductal carcinoma." In sharp contrast to the medical terminology is the image of a "rose that grows / in a pathologist’s petri dish."

"Platitudes" begins with the line "It’s a good thing they caught it early" and continues to list the cliches often offered to someone diagnosed with cancer. The layout of the poem, with space between each line, suggests how empty and unhelpful these words might feel to the recipient. 

The short lines in the poem "Radiology of the left breast" create a clinical effect. The use of the passive voice, particularly in the lines "Careful measurements are taken / and your skin marked up" and "You are moved into the correct position," emphasises the impersonal nature of the procedure.

Strength and hope are evident throughout Stanton’s pamphlet. Her poems are both unsentimental and powerful, and whilst deeply personal, they are also relevant to many women undergoing the same experience.

About the reviewer
Karen Powell-Curtis has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and magazines. 

You can read more about Have they marked you with arrows? on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Karen Powell-Curtis of "Poems of a Nottingham Lace-Runner" by Mary Bailey

Mary Bailey published her pamphlet of thirteen poems in 1826 to raise money to support her nine children. Her poems offer an insight into the world of working-class women in the 1820s and, in particular, Mary Bailey’s life. John Goodridge’s introduction to this revised edition offers context to the poems in terms of time, place and social class.

Lace-runners were employed to embroider patterns onto lace, and in "Petition to the British Fair" Bailey writes: "How hard have we work’d, and our eyes how we’ve strain’d, / When those beautiful flowers we run." Later in the poem, we discover this work isn’t rewarded as well as it should be: 

          How pleasant’s the task, whenever we’re ask’d,
                 To work hard to beautify you;
          Then I’m sure you will own, with candour, unmask’d,
                 Good food and good clothing’s our due; 

          But the price is so low, that, sad to relate, 
                 We cannot these blessings obtain.

Bailey never views her nine children as a burden in spite of her poverty. "To a Lady who desired me to pray for the death of my youngest child" is her response to the woman who made this heartless suggestion. Her love for her children is clear in the lines "Her innocent smile shall my troubles beguile, / And make poverty light as a feather." In the final stanza she comments "lady, forbear to advise, / Till a mother’s affections you feel." In "The Author to Her Infant Twins," she expresses similar sentiments: "Welcome, dear little strangers, welcome here, / Altho’ to keen adversity you’ve come."

"The Locust" is addressed to her daughters and carries the message they should never be cruel. This poem gives us a strong sense of Bailey’s character. She is horrified to discover two young girls playing with "a poor little locust, pierc’d through with a pin." She tells them:

           To a nice school you go, where a lady doth teach,
                  And you much finer feelings should learn;
          But, I’m better than you, though my frock’s common blue,
                  While my heart doth such cruelty spurn. 

Bailey may have published her poems to meet an immediate financial need but two hundred years later they are still relevant.

About the reviewer
Karen Powell-Curtis has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and magazines. 

Review by Karen Powell-Curtis of "Familiar Phantoms" by Sue Forrester

Sue Forrester’s debut pamphlet, Familiar Phantoms, transports us across time and place, from England to Africa and Asia. We tend to think of phantoms in terms of people, but Sue Forrester writes of places as if they too are phantoms. 

Her poems are rich with sensory details. In "Lamping with Lizard" we hear the "rustles, chirps and clicks" of Africa after dark and, by torchlight, we see "Iridescent bulbous beetles." We experience the fragrances of the "verandah scented with citronella" in "Small World," and the "jasmine blooms" in "The Scent of War." The poem "Cooking with Mother" offers taste and touch through the "production / of eighty doughnuts for the tea tent."

Forrester uses the power of objects to evoke the phantoms in her poems, and to link the past to the present. For example, in "One September Day," the Registrar’s fountain pen triggers a memory of a "21st birthday gift from Aunt Win," and simultaneously creates a new memory as she "Writes in the book, the forever book, / in the forever ink" to register a birth.

A "silver and black obsidian butterfly brooch" brings to mind another aunt in "And Apple Pie." In this prose poem, it is the absence of a particular object, a "silver-trimmed barrel" from which the aunt "dispensed chocolate biscuits" which represents the unique relationship between the niece and her aunt. Forrester writes, "And I mourn that biscuit barrel, swept away in a heartless house clearance, her daughters knowing only their mother, not my aunt."

"Needlecraft" is full of details revealing the love between a family. The central item in this poem is a knitting needle which has been repurposed to check "the lemon cake is done." The needle is the "survivor of the pair I used / when my big sister taught me to knit." This prompts the memory of sitting "on the little chair, / Daddy made for me," watching "my sister make a buttonholed loop / on the pot holder I’d knitted for Mum."

We gain a sense of a life through recollections involving cars in "My Brother’s Car." The poem ends with the moving description of the brother telling "a crowded chapel how he got to know / our father under a car" with "oil dripping onto their heads and hands: / a malodorous unction, full of grace."

The phantoms in Sue Forrester’s pamphlet are sensitively summoned but her poems never slip into sentimentality.

About the reviewer
Karen Powell-Curtis has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and magazines.