Review by Jon Wilkins of "Scenes from Life on Earth" by Kathryn Simmonds

Saying that someone or something is clever is often seen as an insult, and a rather patronising one at that. But in this case, when I say that the poems of Kathryn Simmonds are clever, I mean it in the broadest possible sense. 

Kathryn Simmonds persuades us with her use of language and rhythm, appearance and tone, that her world is a world that we should enter. She draws us in with the simplicity of her writing, that disguises so many ideas and displays of talent.

We see the depth of her feelings for her mother. She mourns and we mourn with her as her pain surrounds us, dragging us into her words. These are words that envelop and create another world that we can co-exist in; a world that recognises bereavement, that shows us what loss can do, far beyond the immediate numbness and anger, but at least a measure of closure. Memories are combined with stories and images from her childhood that reflect so easily her love for her mother. Light touches shine in each poem as a remembrance is shared and happiness recalled. We see that one can move on towards, if not acceptance, a future that can keep the good things close to heart. Her poems are a celebration of life, a festival of death and an awareness of memory and how it is so important once a loved one has gone.

Some of her phrases are visceral. Others as delicate as silk. But they stick in our minds. Simmonds finds humour where we least expect it, beauty when we are looking into shadows. She observes life and death for us, as her imagination flies about her world - a world that becomes ours.

Life could be so complicated as could death, but Simmonds simplifies it and welcomes us with open arms. Witty and charming. Her good grace, her good humour overcomes sadness. The humour draws us in and wraps its arms about us. Her poem "Equinox" sums it all up so easily, so perfectly, and we can feel precisely what she means.

Kathryn Simmonds is so clever.

About the reviewer

Jon Wilkins is 66. He is married to the gorgeous Annie with two wonderful sons. He was a teacher for twenty years, a Waterstones bookseller and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. Nowadays he takes notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester University. He has had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. He has had poems in magazines and anthologies, art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station. He loves writing poetry. For his MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. He followed it up with Utrecht Rain, and is now writing a third part. He is currently writing a crime series, Poppy Knows Best, set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s.

You can read another review by Jane Simmons of Scenes from Life on Earth, by Kathryn Simmonds, on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Review by Jane Simmons of "Scenes from Life on Earth," by Kathryn Simmonds

Scenes from Life on Earth is the third collection of poems from Kathryn Simmonds, the follow-up to her 2008 Forward Prize-winning debut collection Sunday at the Skin Launderette (Seren) and her second collection Visitations (Seren 2013).

The new collection addresses the loss of the poet’s mother, how we grieve, and how we remember those we love; it also explores the related themes of motherhood, of life and death, and how to live in the modern world.

These are big themes, but Simmonds is not afraid to visit them or to explore their mysteries through the prism of her religious faith. That is not to say that the poems themselves are religious poems, or that faith dominates the collection: although there are references to Christ and poems which reference familiar Biblical narratives such as the story of Jonah and the whale, the poet is just as likely to address her big questions or arrive at her celebration of the living or the dead through perceptive observations of the natural world. The meetings of the physical and metaphysical worlds are also sign-posted in the titles of several of the poems which reference tipping points in the week, the months, and the year: 'Wednesday Morning,' 'April,' 'November,' 'Solstice,' 'Equinox.'

Lessons are taught by children, who are presented in ways which might remind the reader of Blake or Wordsworth, but also by plants, birds, insects or even garden weeds and pests such as dandelions or slugs. The war on weeds in 'Dandelion' is mistaken – the plants should be celebrated for their joyous enthusiasm for 'more life.' Elsewhere, the poet asserts that it is better to be a leaf 

          than 
          walk about all day, 
          tormented by a brain

The messages from nature are asserted once more in the closing lines of the final poem which provides the title for the collection:

          I loved the trees because
          they had redemption down, 
          oh God be glorified, I loved the trees! 

          The way they ate their old regrets 

                                                   and made them into leaves.

About the reviewer

Jane Simmons is a former teacher – and now a PhD student. She won the University of Leicester’s G. S. Fraser poetry prize in 2019, 2020 and 2021, and the Seren Christmas poetry prize in 2020. Her work has appeared in Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Blue Nib Magazine and on the Seren blog, as well as being long-listed for the Butcher’s Dog Magazine.