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MARGARET BRADSTOCK
Review: Handfeeding the Crocodile, Gina Mercer
Pardalote Press, 2007
The back cover
of Gina Mercer’s third collection of poetry, Handfeeding the Crocodile, promises
the reader ‘poetry moving at a high level of grace and definition’ (Peter
Bishop), poetry which ‘shows Mercer at her muscular best.’ In fact, many of
these poems have the muscular grace and fine-honed perceptions of haiku. The title poem is
a case in point, its sense of urgency and danger created by means of short, hard-hitting
lines and a central evocative conceit:
‘Night
Breathing’ is another evocative piece, this time the mood an aftermath of contented
domesticity:
Likewise,
‘Lizard of Loss,’ the lovely following poem, focuses on grief and loss as
represented in the drawing of a dead lizard:
A number of
poems explore the double face of love/sex (‘Our Frequency,’ ‘Spice,’
‘Dugong Map,’ ‘Sprinkler Waltzing,’) or invoke sexual politics
(‘Stirring the Porridge,’ ‘Clothes Lines’). Others comment
confrontingly on the war-games our politicians play (‘Never the Same,’
‘Sarajevo’s Soccer Fields’). There are shape poems (‘Bulbs,’
‘Beach Bellies’), kid poems, and poems that rely on clever word play, such as
‘The Curve of Her Hip’:
The collection
has two centres of grief, firstly the separate and tragic deaths of the persona’s
parents, and then the shared suffering of a sister with cancer. The resultant series of
poems shows the poet working through a process towards eventual acceptance. ‘What You
Showed Me, Father’ is a poem of non-acceptance, of a childhood sense of deprivation:
The more
literal ‘She Turned Right’ and ‘Chrysanthemums’ deal with anger at the
accidental, but avoidable, death of the mother. These poems achieve powerful effects
through the shock value of words, but the more subtle ‘Patchwork,’ relying on
the central image of ‘your idiosyncratic blanket of love,’ is a step further
along in the process of recreating memory.
As if this
suffering were not enough, the very fine ‘Metastasis’ rises to an immediate
pitch of grief:
And then there
are the ‘Glacier’ poems, which I first came upon in Blue Giraffe (and
commented positively on in a review in Five Bells, vol.13 no.1). In context here,
they read even more powerfully, especially ‘Glacier II: Terminal Moraine.’
‘A Howling Affair’ and the low-key sequence ‘Melbourne Weather
Forecasts’ bring this section on grief to a wry conclusion:
Another poem I
meet with renewed appreciation is ‘Let Me Grow Old’ (Blue Giraffe, No.4),
which I’ve previously described as ‘a nice comment on the resilience of art, and
the subjectivity of perceptions of female beauty’ (Five Bells, vol.14 no.4).
It’s always good when later readings confirm your first enthusiastic impressions.
Finally, the poems on Tasmania, where Mercer has made her home, deserve mention for the
warmth of their loyalty and humour:
Handfeeding
the Crocodile is a book to be enjoyed, to be empathised with, to be moved by.
Mercer’s finest poems in this collection stand up among the best.
BIO: Margaret
Bradstock is a Sydney poet, editor and critic. She has published four collections of
poetry, the most recent of which are The Pomelo Tree (Ginninderra, 2001), which won
the Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry, and Coast (Ginninderra, 2005). She has
also won Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson awards.