ISBN: 9781902638713 (1902638719)
Publication Date August 2005

Format: Paperback, 196x130 mm, 130 pages
£7.99

This very impressive first collection of poems by Lorna Catriona Lloyd, who is also a visual artist, contains some lively and sensitive descriptions of both the exterior detail of everyday life and the interior of the emotional.

The imagery she uses is surreal, moving and clever. All the poems have a self-contained feel to them. Metaphor is used expertly, in, for example, ‘Ship in a bottle’: ‘Your heart refused to travel, like a ship in a bottle . . . I still wonder how you became small enough to claw your way inside such a narrow unforgiving aperture’. The simplicity of the content in each stanza adds to the depth of the subject matter, as in ‘Chrysalis’: ‘I witnessed a morbid genesis – she shed a skin nightdress–'

The ‘For Sale’ list in her Paris Journal ’97 invokes a colourful display of images. There is later a curious collection of writings again from a Paris Journal – colourful snapshots such as ‘Art Trail’ – ‘looking for triangles ... the Louvre entrance an enormously obvious one but I find a patently obvious one too on the end of a passing red stiletto’ – there is a subtle humour throughout this journal writing.

There is a real sharpness in her use of language, as in ‘Puddles’: ‘You know the way a puddle reflects the universe, inviting you to leap into heaven, that’s him, pretending to be deep, when an inch down I hit rock bottom.’ She has a fantastically fresh vision which shines through.

Altogether, a very enjoyable book, thoroughly interesting and visually rich, a first collection with an abundance of varied poems.

Clare Maynard