The Eel takes an avid interest in her writers, and loves it when they keep in touch with her after the Eel has published their work in her issues. She was thrilled when Jade Kennedy let the Eel know about the release of her first poetry collection and was looking for people to review it. She was even more excited when the Eel's Guest Blogger for August/September Rose Drew offered to write a review of Silver Threads for the Eel's site. The Eel is delighted to welcome Jade and Rose back to the Eel's platform!
Silver Threads: Jade Kennedy (2012, Valley Press)
Reviewed by Rose Drew
This slim volume of 21 poems, most of delicate length,
takes the reader on a journey from shame and regret, through nights of guilt,
dark fog and ice, to a resolution of forgiveness and getting on with it. By the
end of the collection, we are awash in acceptance for sins that are left
unspecified.
The author buries her meanings deeply within symbolism
both readily understandable (“This well was built by my hands,/each stone laid
down under a waxing moon./I am fated to drown beneath its brown shameful
waters..”, from ‘Still Waters’) and more obscure (“I have a white skin of
cardboard”, from ‘December’), leaving much of the work to the reader. This
allows readers to take away their own meanings, which is preferable to poems
that tell too much, that spell out each and every interpretation. A slight
danger for the novice poetry enthusiast or the less literary-minded may be a
sense of being closed out from understanding the author’s motives.
The opening poem, ‘The Lies I told my Mother’ is a
personal favourite (I had a difficult mother), but the poet is redeemed, one
hopes, by the Mother who urges the poet to let go of the most harmful regrets
(“that which scars the spirit”).
Interspersed between the guilt and regret are fascinating
descriptions of run-down seaside tourist towns (‘Sunshine’), ageing Hallowe’en
props (‘Carved Smile’), and a vivid account of a typical boozy night on the
town, seeking escape, anonymity and individuality. In ‘Gothic Undercurrents’,
we follow urban drinkers as they “…follow/ the same faceless shepherd,/ lured
into a pen that they believe/ cannot be labelled”, but they are sheep,
“scream[ing]/ in individual voices” doomed to live “the same non-conformist
story.” Ms Kennedy has a sharp eye for capturing the conformity inherent in
striving for individualism in large groups; but there can be safety in numbers
too.
Whereas the collection is riddled with guilt, the riddle
is what the guilt is for; but at the end, the poet has worked out her feelings.
As we follow her into self-forgiveness, she ties both halves of the collection
together with ‘Yorvik’, which imagines lost Viking villagers as they stumble
back into existence (“and come to the surface/ to be amongst the living once
more.”) and process through “towns, cities and fields”. The author is amongst
the throng, and so the dead wade into the surf to meet the Devil; or perhaps a
more benign Deity: but all are “barefoot and chastised….with our hearts
humbled”, so one assumes a sense of peaceful acceptance. The imagery of
thrusting hands and crumbled ancient villagers dragging out into the light of
modern day is appreciated by this historian! To keep her promise of salvation,
the last two poems choose life and welcome the dark as just a passage from day
through night, with a sky glittered by friendly moon and sparkling stars: “and
show us all maybe, just for one night/ that the dark is just dark,/ no meaning
to be found.”
This is an exciting first collection, with a style of writing
more often found in the pages of Orbis.
One hopes that Jade Kennedy has many more years to take us on a range of
journeys.
