A Kinder Sea
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley May 3, 2020
Author Felicity Plunkett
Distributor: UQP
ISBN: 9780702262708
Publisher: UQP
Release Date: February 2020
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Poetry is of its very nature an intensely person collection of thoughts, images, emotions; the telling of stories with a myriad of words each one used in a very different manner or style. Long poetry, short poetry, prose all delivering a message.
Felicity Plunkett has released her second anthology of poetry, A Kinder Sea, some seven years in the making, with a title that is as disarming as the poetry contained within the pages. The immediate image that comes to mind it that of works relating to the sea, which is indeed the case, but what is the metaphor or is there a metaphor that is being constructed: is it the sea, the oceans of the world, a majestic world of wonderment, turbulence and danger or the ebb and flow of life as it is lived; of love, or enchantment of desire and heartbreak.
A mother’s pride in her son, full of rich emotion, has been beautifully crafted in the first piece Sound Bridge, a celebration of her son singing the Lachrymose with one hundred Moravian choristers; a piece transcribed by Mozart but left unfinished. The emotional line ‘Lachrymose dies ill: all day grief’s weft across joy’s warp’ is majestic in perfection.
Blood days: Monochords is stunning in its simplicity; in the minimalist style of delivery. Black and white, no distraction, just the words on the page. Use them as you wish, place your own interpretation on them, allow them to circulate within the mind, the imagination, enjoy the power of a simple, unadorned word.
These are just two of the many, many pieces that capture the intellect, the imagination and the emotion. With many of pieces the feelings have been stripped bare. Sumptuous in their interrelationship of emotion, counteracted with an almost clinical apathy which could be considered as a juxtaposition for thought.
A Kinder Sea is a diverse body of modern poetry which should be considered as selective reading with wide appeal, but definitely considered as an anthology that needs to be savoured piece by piece.