Five Islands Press, ISBN 0
7340 3635 3
Francesca Haig’s first collection
of poetry is published in New Poets Series Eleven by Five Islands Press. Each year, six
poets have been selected for Chapbook size publication in the Series. With the departure
of Ron Pretty from Five Islands Press, the series is no longer and one can only hope the
new management of Five Islands Press will be able to reinstate it later down the track.
Haig’s collection has been awarded
a highly commended in the 2007 Anne Elder Award for a first book of poetry. She was born
in 1981 and grew up in Hobart. Some of her poetry is included in journals Overland,
Famous Reporter and Blue Dog. She is completing her PhD in Creative Arts at
the University of Melbourne. Philip Salom says of her work on the cover blurb, "This
is quiet poetry but it is also very impressive."
I found the poems clear, the content
suggestive of newly gained maturity. Some of the poems offer almost Zen-like acceptance of
the world of emotional highs and lows. From the opening poem, The Greek Woman which
explores her own interpretation of interactions between mortals and gods;
I am not / so much a woman / as a coin slot.
(i Danae),
We know that if we enter hope, / like entering Hades, /
there will be no coming back.
(ii Jocasta)
Ask me whatever you like: / wood’s answer to
everything / is wood.
(iii Daphne).
Haig incorporates the progress and
experiences of her life in several poems such as Villanelle for a pregnancy test and
Villanelle and these poems seemed more contrived as a result of attention to a strict
form. In the sequence Rock-climbing poems she advances through the stages of the climb,
"the rope between us / becomes a string stretched’; and the climb becomes the
metaphor for her relationship with the other, ‘let’s have a look at you’.
Love is her subject matter here and
throughout the other poems, whether she is focused on love in its sensual mode or love in
its familial mode. Of particular note are the poems about her sister, which focus on the
condition anorexia and its impact on the poet as the involved observer. These are strong
poems with imagery and tensions poised and confident. Haig uses a spare, yet curious
approach to what matters, as this sequence crosses narrative with a very subtle plan. The
result is poetry unexpectedly free of clutter or lumpy clinical explanations.
Lying on your back next to me,
your hip bones are the fins
of two sharks circling closely.
Your ribs are the ridged edge
of a stack of plates.
How close we are
(Koonya, Tasman Peninsula)
After seven months of her silence
we learnt a new word: aphonia
to place next to anorexia.
She was addicted to bones.
My sister
is growing.
I hope she’s preparing
a harvest of new things:
in the two soapstone boxes next to her diary,
she is growing
two small breasts.
(Gestation)
Two poems that delight, depict the
innocence of young lovers abroad; Paris bells ‘In the belly of my mouth, / full of
secrets, / I am heavy // with waiting for you’ and St Sulpice, France
‘Squinting, drunk with sun we / go down to the river, our bodies / like a
still-vibrating drum, resonate’. With these poems Haig offers us a micro world of
sensual delight. The poems act as small and perfectly sounded notes prior to the darker
poems on love and life concluding her collection.
The poet demonstrates the unraveling so
very quietly in; Love is hard on poets and in Artefacts ‘Depression is another
country; / I cannot, and I will not, take you there.’; ‘Needing proof, I am my
own vulture: / I pick my own bones clean.’
Haig seems to prefer the lyric and
narrative modes of presentation with no indication that her interests might extend towards
other post modern/avant or more experimental language modes. What does distinguish her
work from much other lyric poetry on offer is the freshness of her eye and the ability she
has to find images from the edges of the story lines, possibilities many poets might pass
by or shy away from. She concludes this collection with a wonderful sequence, the title
poem for her collection.
In Bodies of water a sequence of nine
poems Haig seems to step out entirely into a clear space, where she works within a known
and somewhat mastered sensibility to transcend loss. By recalling and catching all the
usual, yet relevant details, her insights gain momentum.
Where words abandon you
your body
becomes lucid.
(i.)
shifting and joining
finding the same level.
You taught me how we thirst.
(ii.)
the phone on the hook
after you leave
(iii.)
Haig’s confrontation with loss is
not a bitter place but it is a dark place at times. Yet the poet maintains a sure and
clear direction as she keeps her balance. This sequence concludes with a cautious sense of
hope evident in Haig’s closing lines;
Time passes with only the sound that dew makes.
I leave my words behind me
like clothes on a beach
step into silence.
(ix.)
Francesca Haig has managed a remarkable
first collection well worthy of praise and for all the brevity of Chapbook size
collections, I think they offer a poet of Haig’s abilities an opportunity to put
related material forward in a very special way. I’m sure she will continue to explore
poetry with fresh and honest observations.