KAREN KNIGHT | LAUNCH SPEECH

Lyn Reeves' poetry collection 'Designs on the Body'

Wednesday 23rd February, 2011 at the Lark Distillery, Hobart.

Interactive Publications, 2010

It’s easy to see why Lyn Reeves won the 2010 IP Picks Best Poetry Award for her stunning new collection Designs on the Body. This wonderful body of work is the breast milk of Australian poetry.

The tattooed body on the front cover lures you to open the first page and touch Lyn’s words, their texture, their shape – sensual, revealing and mysterious.

There is so much pleasure in the texture of Lyn’s language, her lyrical sensuality and an overall dexterity and richness. She revises her work extensively and she’s not afraid to experiment with forms e.g. her highly surreal prose poem 'Off the Map' on page 33 which is patterned and shaped with utmost skill.

The most any writer can offer a reader is herself and Lyn lets the world in with her writing. She simply relates what she perceives to be a human experience and writes it in a language that can be understood universally. She’s a lover of words and she makes peace through them. Nature is close to her heart, therefore each poem is self sufficient. I sense that Lyn’s poetry is like a spiritual practice for her, a bit like taking time out to practise Tai Chai.

I read in a Famous Reporter interview that Lyn enjoys the taste of words, their shapes, sounds and textures, how they fascinate her.

Her bead poems throughout this collection are links within her own life, they are talismans of strong memories. These poems are so powerful and moving the reader will not fail to be affected.

I lent this book to my next door neighbour, Jane, whose cousin is the Scottish writer, Alexander McCall Smith and she said to me These poems are so personal. The first poem she read 'Requium for Je Reviens by Worth' brought back powerful memories of her mother and the French perfume she wore - Je Reviens means I return.

Lyn evokes the senses in her poems with lush imagery using objects like jade, garnets, pearls and amber, then scents like eucalypt and pepper berries, the breeze exhaling a smell of something mislaid and mouldering in the seams of a jacket, then sounds of wing beats, bloodsong, a lover’s breath against the neck, then the taste of summer rain, gold cantaloupes, spiced meats and strawberries.

Magdalena Ball from The Compulsive Reader states that after reading Designs on the Body, the senses are not only invoked, but mingled in such a way that the metaphors combine and grow, illuminating each moment presented in a full body experience.

There is an image in Carl Sandburg’s 38 Definitions of Poetry that fits Lyn’s style of writing so well.

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly wings and the scraps of torn up love letters.

Some of my favourites out of the fifty-six poems in this book are 'Simple as Breathing', where one can really feel the poet’s anxiety and her sense of loneliness when she’s away from home. Lyn isn’t afraid to show us her vulnerability in these poems, her feelings of isolation and home sickness in poems such as 'Absence' where she is mourning the end of her Summer garden and 'Empty Space' where she is alone in another place missing the place where someone else is. Writing in isolation has its emotional costs.

In her poem 'Primal Sense', all the senses become alive as Lyn describes the bathing and massaging of her new born son. Fragrances of oil pressed from the stones of apricots, washing away the smell of the meaty pungency of childbirth, hearing the sound of her child’s vertebrae rippling beneath her hands, like birdsong, outlining and stroking the babys fingers and toes, the soles of his feet. I was with her, witnessing this sacred ritual of mother wanting her child to have first memory of milk, honey and spice and not the harshness of steel instruments and the hospital crib.

'Recipe for a Signature Scent' is another stand out poem in this collection where you can dream your own perfume.

'Frangipani' evokes a tropical paradise with the delicate beauty of the flower and the harshness of the outback climate. Lyn wrote this poem during a residency in Darwin when she stepped out of her stone hut one day into the soaring heat and during a walk she found these flowers on the ground. She filled her skirt with their satin mandalas, came back to the coolness of the hut and floated them in a shallow bowl as she listened to the tropical rain outside.

The poem 'Pheromones' is one of the most highly charged, erotic poems I have ever read. And for any writer who has attempted erotic poetry, with success and originality, I’m sure you will agree with me, it’s one of the most difficult forms of writing.

In her tanka sequence 'Irazumi Lover', the poet masters the erotica again with the lines: How I love to play in the wild meadow of your thighs. Should you impregnate me I would give birth to flowers.

I remember when Lyn first told me about how she came to write her extraordinary poem 'The things you find on the beach aren’t always pretty' – how, during a walk along Lauderdale beach, she saw a newborn rabbit, still blind, with no mother in sight, struggling against the elements. When she read the poem out it disturbed me so much I couldn’t get the image of this lost animal out of my head and how brutal life can sometimes be, yet it’s my favourite poem out of the whole collection. I’d like to read it to you but it fills me with too much emotion and I’m looking forward to hearing only Lyn read her own work this evening.

So many superb poems to comment on and not enough time this evening.

We rely on poetry to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy or sorrow.

Australian poet, Craig Powell once said that a good poem is the flesh of emotion on the backbone of craftsmanship.

I personally felt more balanced after reading Designs on the Body, as though my equilibrium had been restored. And I am sure you will all find moments of enlightenment whilst reading these poems.

I am most honoured to know Lyn as a friend, to own a copy of this beautiful book and to have been asked to launch it.

Thank you.