11 March 1999 Edition
New in print: Weathering
by Ann Zell
Published By Salmon Poetry
Price £6.99
If a poem is about a single idea, then a collection of poetry should be a complete experience - and that's what Ann Zell has produced in Weathering. The art of Zell's work is that, even though each poem possesses the freedom and imagination to stand alone, they combine to form one complete, highly-structured movement of thought and experience.
Weathering charts the poet's life from the tensions of family, community and lifestyle on a potato farm in Idaho, and weaves the reader through the further experiences of motherhood, politics, friendship and escape.
Ann Zell's voluntary exile from the USA brought her to settle in West Belfast in 1980. Since then, life in Belfast has had an immence effect on her poetry. It has allowed her to bind together images of bickering couples in Castle Street, idle teenagers in the City Cemetery and the odd political demonstration or two - all this just as competently as anyone who has lived here all their life.
Among the personal observations there are exceptional moments of clarity, such as in ``Round trip'' where social ills and habits are juxtaposed with a mormon pastoral upbringing. but as society beckoned the poet, it seems to have brought with it the humour of ``walking home alone, drunk'', and the politics of ``Resistance two-step'' and `Anniversary march''.
Weathering is about existing. It is about womanhood and resistance. And as one poem reaches into the next, so the reader is carried through an experience that is theirs as well as the poet's.
By Michael Gallagher
Published By Salmon Poetry
Price £6.99
If a poem is about a single idea, then a collection of poetry should be a complete experience - and that's what Ann Zell has produced in Weathering. The art of Zell's work is that, even though each poem possesses the freedom and imagination to stand alone, they combine to form one complete, highly-structured movement of thought and experience.
Weathering charts the poet's life from the tensions of family, community and lifestyle on a potato farm in Idaho, and weaves the reader through the further experiences of motherhood, politics, friendship and escape.
Ann Zell's voluntary exile from the USA brought her to settle in West Belfast in 1980. Since then, life in Belfast has had an immence effect on her poetry. It has allowed her to bind together images of bickering couples in Castle Street, idle teenagers in the City Cemetery and the odd political demonstration or two - all this just as competently as anyone who has lived here all their life.
Among the personal observations there are exceptional moments of clarity, such as in ``Round trip'' where social ills and habits are juxtaposed with a mormon pastoral upbringing. but as society beckoned the poet, it seems to have brought with it the humour of ``walking home alone, drunk'', and the politics of ``Resistance two-step'' and `Anniversary march''.
Weathering is about existing. It is about womanhood and resistance. And as one poem reaches into the next, so the reader is carried through an experience that is theirs as well as the poet's.
By Michael Gallagher