Island to Island (Chatto poetry) Book

Island to Island is Gerard Woodward's third collection of poems for Chatto, following Householder (1991) and After the Deafening (1994). Described as an "investigation into the nature of social space"--"Architecture is politics/By other means" according to "Recent History"--the poems included here run amok through the mythologized city: "I saw the taxis/Flowing like treacle/Through the Kentish Styx" ("The Taxis"); "Paul lived/In the third alcove, lived/In a monumental mantelpiece" ("Revolution of the Viaduct"). A heavily emblematic, sometimes baffling, collection is brought together by an insistence on place, an attempt to make allegory out of the everyday which treads a (sometimes) fine line between symbol and sarcasm: "Couples become biographies/As they plan their future flower- beds" ("Suburban Glass"). In the tradition of a symbolic poetry, enamoured of myth, Island to Island is ambitious and sophisticated, challenging its readers to an exercise in decoding which, when it works, can turn the writing into a palimpsest. Central to that wager is "The Madness of Heracles", a modernisation and urbanisation of the 12 labours of Hercules--"That all dangerous dogs are/Rounded up and banished/To a lonely island. The Isle/Of Dogs"--which, occupying nearly half the volume, sets the tone: allusive, clever, witty, occasionally more muddied than veiled. --Vicky LebeauRead More