Review: Waterford Writers Anthology 4

Life, death and everything in between is covered in this slim book and refreshingly, the work comes from everyday people rather than the high-fluentness oft associated with poets.

The anthology begins with a ghost story from Jessica Clerkin, who seems to favour the dark and macabre. Later Paul Kearney plays on religious symbolism.

Paul Edmondson’s ‘Featherlight’ is beautiful. He resists the urge to dramatize silence but doesn’t veer into sappy hallmark platitude’s…a balance to well struck. I particularly liked the line’ ‘Beneath a beech, I give him back.’ The words of Mary Howlett’s ‘The morning after the night before on Symth’s Street.’ Are exactly the kind of thing I like. Ultra-specific urban quirks that take years of living in a place to notice but are also somehow universally recognised.

‘On Being Old’ by Ger Rodgers illuminated a oft-forgotten but important artistic subject: the experience of aging. It takes a comedic yet poignant perspective. I particularly liked the dogma: “cranky young makes cranky old.” 

By the same poet, Primeval Atom is almost a prayer to impermanence. The use of repetition to represent the cycles of life gave the piece an almost mystical quality.

Common threads bind this book. The calming effect with nature being disrupted by the brutality of climate change. Interestingly, driving appears in many of the poems. As a form of freedom sure but also as an act of remembrance. Classic roads around Waterford such as N25 to Ross, along the Suir to Tipperary which hardly thought twice about in the county are given new meanings and new importance.

The book ends with a kind of state-of-the-nation address from Bill Walsh, “The means justified, by hungry judges, A.I. with pain receptors, Vivisection, trading in futures, And all but a few sanitised pasts.” 

A brilliant summation of the state of this beautiful, painful world.