Hollis is an exceptionally lyrical writer, and he uses metaphor and imagery a great deal. In ‘The Orchard Underwater,’ one of the most memorable poems in the book, we begin with someone casting a fishing line, only for them to remember a raft of apples that once came bobbing their way. This leads to the subject of the orchard, now buried underwater, when the valley was flooded for the dam. Along with the rest of the village, it’s uncovered during a drought, “and folk came from their homes again / to walk among themselves; / past cattle pens, apple pots, the school room / trapped with fish; / like time given back, offered over again; / as if all the words they failed to say / were spilled out on the quay and claimed / like undelivered letters finding home.” There’s a moment of regret that follows, a reference to someone who could be Hollis’s father, before the poem’s final images sound, a “church bell moving in the swell, / calling the waters to prayer.”

‘The River Drivers,’ another long poem, is also one of the best. It deals with the dangerous business of driving logs downriver to the mill: “we will walk the water / on a cargo of pulpwood and timber / with only a pikepole and the caulks on our boots / to balance.” One log can jam the rest, and if a man stands on the wrong one, he can slip through “a gate in the river” and drown. The narrator of the poem remembers men who drowned, and a woman who stood on the loch side waiting for the mailboat to deliver her dead lover’s words. This poem also uses layout to replicate the jumps between logs as the words jump between spaces and lines.

‘The Sour House’ describes a home full of bottles of unopened milk. “For years he maintained the world his parents left / taking in milk he never drank.”

‘Sandwriting’ continues the excellence of his other longer poems, with some great lines on the subject of an affair that has passed away. The narrator sits at night, drinking. Later he goes to write a name in the sand and wait for the tide to come and efface it, “as one by one the oil lamps wicked across the bay / like a hundred homes standing up / to be counted.”

In ‘Election’ a woman looks out her window on the day the country is voting for change, and sees things in her surroundings she hasn’t noticed before. The poem starts off: “When they ask you, you will say / that you only did as anyone would: / retreat to what you know.” Which is a fair summation of many people’s voting patterns as well as their lives in general. But later, we’re told: “There is no choice less painful than the rest / just a cleft between what’s good, and what is best.”

‘One Man Went to Mow,’ meanwhile, offers a bleak view of agricultural life. In fact a number of poems are set against the countryside. Of the love poems, ‘Here Are Some Words’ has a wonderful beginning: “Through the feint of the half-light, / you are leaving our bed, and stepping out / of the circle that marks what we know / from what we will measure apart.” Water is here as it is in so many of the poems, in this case in the rain on the window, rain which has also“brushed the streets.”

There are so many poems in this collection worth picking out, but it’s perhaps best to let the prospective reader make their own discoveries. If water is a constant theme, winter and snow too crop up again and again. Of course, snow is a form of water. But the winter theme starts from the first page, in a poem that is itself called ‘Wintering,’ and which, like so many poems in the collection, is steeped in memory.

The book is dedicated to Hollis’s father, and there’s a group of five poems at the end dealing with his death from cancer. These are separated from the main body of the collection, and yet they are not out of place. In a book saturated with memories of childhood and relatives, these poems belong perfectly.

Hollis is not a poet who indulges in cheap tricks or showy poetic games. His writing is more subtle, and the lyricism and use of imagery such as a village and its orchard uncovered from beneath a lake, linger on in the mind of the reader. ‘Ground Water’ is a fine debut collection and well deserves the literary plaudits it has received.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.