Over lockdown, with me being unable to get out to anywhere as near poetry nights and readings as I used to get to, I used the opportunity to go watch nights online.
Some of course were better than others but some of the unexpected pleasures came when I got asked twice to judge a online Poetry Zoom Slam.
I won once some years back in Manchester in person, and thoroughly hated the experience but the two on Zoom I went as part of Oh Beehive were great fun, as there was so many great writers there who could have won the heats they did.
Some of them have being on my Spoken Word Podcast ‘Spoken Label’ and others are to follow off course.
One of my favourites so far has being the Isle of Man Poet, Jackie Morrey-Grace who sent over to me after her two debut collections ‘On Ravensdale Hill’ and ‘Asila’s Song’ (which will follow shortly in a separate review) after our Spoken Label session which have being two of my favourite collections that I have read recently I must admit.
On Ravensdale Hill is perhaps the more straightforward of these two collections originally came about after Jackie won the Manx Litfeat Poetry Slam with TaTaTaboo, a poetic battle between the Raven and Phoenix.
This book tells the full story around Ravensdale is the area around Ballaugh Plantation in the Isle of Man on Ravensdale Hill is a fictional name for the steep hillside up Ballacobb from the forgotten valley at Glen Dhoo.
My knowledge of Isle of Man is very limited it does stating, and all I know about it is what my brother has said about flying over to meetings there only to get stuck both times in horrific storms, but this book is far from that of course with an elegance.
Take for example – the second piece in the book ‘The Beginning’ (which is really the start of the book for me)
‘It all began on a cold winter’s day
when a woe tiding of magpies
stole swift in low skies
there was a frost in the air
as they leapt;
thieves,
plundering their fare
from the sprawl sacrified life
at the lonely roadside.’
This book for me which has a myth, almost fable like quality which I discovered when I started reading this out to Amanda in our hotel room on Christmas Eve in particular grew faster and faster after a gentle start with the beginning later on to Ta Ta Taboo which starts off with:
“SILENCE!
Old Raven,
I’ll hear no more
of your throbbing, dark wings,
of your Ta-Taboo caw.”
On Ravensdale Hill is a book which a number of layers within it which unwrap themselves like a present with a bit of thought if you let it.
It’s a book which I thought after reading nearly the lot out to Amanda that I could have imagined both of us in years gone past if we were travelling, it was the sort of thing you could have seen travellers telling you it in all by campfires but also has a modern feel on lines in the finale “Epoliogue”
“echoing over the steady waters
of the frosty biting rivers
where I trod”
This is a book which treaded in my subconscious coming alive in all of ways.
Excellent.
9/10
Jackie’s website is here for more details: https://jackiemorreygrace.weebly.com/
The book can be bought here
https://quirky.im/product/on-ravensdale-hill-by-jackie-morrey-grace/
No comments:
Post a Comment