Polley’s “Potsherds” seems to me to echo the cadences of some of Mahon’s earlier poems like “An Image from Beckett” and “Lives” (both also written in triplets) and “The Apotheosis of Tins”. I think it’s interesting and suggestive to hold these poems together in the mind and let them play against each other, but of course “Potsherds” has preoccupations and a voice all its own, and it’s these that I want to look at.[1]

The opening lines are brilliantly paced to combine quietly understated language with imaginative sweep, especially in the dramatic expansion of perspective brought by line three:… Continue Reading

You can link to the poem by clicking here.

“Doll’s House” deliberately unsettles the reader by suddenly lurching off and becoming a different kind of poem to the one it seems to be at the outset. As a poem about a doll’s house might be expected to, it starts out seeming very formal and contained, with its clear stanza shapes, strong rhymes and a close fit between metre and syntactical cadence that gives the beginning an almost jogtrot rhythm. Admittedly even within the first stanza there are signs that more is stirring in the depths of the poem than … Continue Reading