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Review: Saving Spaces, by Ian Pople

Stella Stocker, Weyfarers No.111, December 2011

Ian Pople's engaging poems in Saving Spaces, touch on similar themes, though with a different emphasis:

A man as a locked bundle
of rods, a man's joints
welded eye sockets where fingertips
cheeks hollowed, stubbled
with swarf.

He continues, reflecting the maker can

threaten to evict the voice...
and tip him over into the forest
litter, among beech husks
and blackbirds turning leaves.

[from 18 vii 05, to Fr. Stan Dye)

Details are sharp and atmospheric, laced with natural images, as in Kissing Game:

A couple stand without kissing:
one folded in a dark duffle coat,
beside the gate, inside the drawn -
to collar; the other sees the sun
braid trees float show fox prints
at the edge of the snow...

to

...a town centre
that is settled on the earth.