…A woman’s rose-sprigged / wallpaper caught off guard, spread open / to goggle-eyed strangers…

Post-sexual intimacy is juxtaposed with talk about guns, demolition, and the memory of this gaping house, before the lovers come back together again. ‘Soldier’ is a good opening poem for Read’s collection.

‘Hotel Hesperia, Venice’ echoes the first poem somewhat. Though it deals with two lovers in bed together in a hotel room, while a storm is breaking outside, the language is sometimes reminiscent of ‘Soldier’ with the shutters breached and the thunder discharging and the hotel imagined as rubble. ‘Dismantling the Gun’ and ‘The Soldier’s Girl’ continue the fascination with guns. ‘The Soldier’s Girl’ is one of the best poems in the book.

I’ve never held a gun, but knew / if I did it would be like this: / in a red nightdress in a foreign town…

Her lover tells her never to touch the weapon, then shows her how to use it. But she’s aware of the dangerous nature of the weapon, when combined with impulse, a moment of anger, or jealousy. She imagines herself caught with someone else:

You in the doorway; the hot recognition / of my white arms sprawled across another / man’s neck kick-starting fury, easy / as a light switch, and jarring your eyes’ / membrane for seconds before black.

Nursing, death and illness are themes that feature strongly in the second section. Sally Read was a psychiatric nurse before she studied and taught English. ‘Instruction’ is one of the best poems in the entire book. Here Read takes us through the procedure for dealing with a corpse, but she does so with great intimacy and tenderness. The humanity of the dead person is never forgotten as he is bathed, his dentures removed, plasters taken off carefully, while each cell is snuffing its lights. The window is opened to let the soul fly. Then the nurse leaves, to return to other duties. ‘Remedy’ is another memorable poem from this section. Read’s work often displays an alchemical mix of detachment, intimacy and tenderness in such poems. The narrator’s father’s death is the subject of ‘As He Died’ while an earlier poem, ‘The Death-Bell’ similarly dwells on the passing of a life, but from a greater distance. There the narrator hears a bell traditionally rung in Sardinia to mark a death.

Sally Read’s poems cross not only the boundaries of life and death, but also geographical distances. England, Sardinia, and the Great Plains of the United States all feature as backdrops. Section three is particularly rooted in the Italian landscape. Here, ‘Confession’ is the highlight, focusing on a love triangle. The narrator is having an affair with a married man whose wife often visits her.

Bless me Father, I may have sinned. Though sinning / seems too arduous for that summer, the longest ever / without rain.

Later, the narrator wonders if the wife knows what’s going on - Did she see the thumbprints / on my neck, smell the ribbon of his musk / in my hair? This is one of the standout poems in the book.

‘Breaking Fish Necks’ meanwhile returns to the directness of the first line in ‘Soldier.’

The next afternoon we tried anal sex / and as you coaxed my neck with your thumbs // I thought of Wolf’s Creek / and the fish you wouldn’t catch, // plump trout necks you couldn’t bear to break / and take home dead to your mother.

The poem continues to mix the images of sex and the lover’s dislike of fishing, the unwillingness to let the fish choke on air, or snap their bones. But the narrator’s body is more resilient. A number of the poems in this section are set in America, where the poet studied for her Masters degree. The last section is mostly set in England, though the beautifully written ‘Jasmine’ seems Italian. The last poem, ‘Journey’ threads intimate thoughts, sex with a lover, through something more mundane - a train journey. There’s a wonderful use of language in this one: I’m coffined / in this rust-pinned torso / careering over bridges, / brambles of cast iron…

Sally Read’s debut is a direct, intimate, and memorable collection. She has a strong voice, speaks powerfully from a female perspective. Bonnie Greer rightly describes her work as “searing.” Read’s poems cut to the heart of some of life’s most powerful moments.

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

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.