Patricia Prime
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SHRINE: POEMS OF SOCIAL CONCERNS
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*Appeared in The Mawaheb
International, June 2000, p 4, and Canopy,
Vol. XV11 39 & 40, July 2000, pages35-36
Dr.
Stephen Gill's collection Shrine is a volume of complex and
skilful poetry, with a
good ear married to
some fine ideas. The
luxuriant textures and
rhythms of Gill's
work point to a conviction that
language is a repository of images
charged with mystery
and possibility. Rather
than by argument or
narrative, his poems
move by linkages, assembled emotions
and memories. The volume
demonstrates Gill's linguistic
intensity, emotional resonance,
historical awareness and
formal innovation. Many
of the poems
in the volume
are essentially about those
moments, fissures, and fractures
which may be said to define the essence of living
fully within the range of human consciousness, both rationally and
emotionally:
This house
is closed
do not step
inside ---
the
terrorists have raised
an army of
reptiles.
(My
House of Peace)
In
many of these poems I felt myself becoming immersed in the poet's
emotions; as in the poems "Mother
of An Aids-ridden Son", "A
Heroin Addict" and the deceptively
fine concluding poem
"Autobiography". The
modulating unease about
how precarious life can be punctuates the description. The modulation of moods is highly
effective. The poems are strong too in
describing remarkable events, which exhibit
a series of sliding emotional shades, some of which
challenge our view of how to see things as they are.
Shrine is
significant not because it contains an impressive array of
forms, but because
of
what the poet does with them. In the
traditional manner, the poet's lines are mostly rhythmical, but sometimes they
are excited, and at other times they are in the choppy nervousness of the
persona:
It was
on the
crossroad of desires
where I met
Me.
Looking into
my eyes,
he shook my
hand
at that cold
moment
and then
dissolved slowly
like evening
in a crowd
of strange faces.
(A
Handshake)
These
are strong poems, taut and visually
sharp while at the
same time being intensely lyrical. They
are individual poems. Gill's gift of language, the immediacy of his wit and
word-play combined with a command
of imagery which not only captures his readers in a freeze-frame, but hustles
them through time
and space to
another dimension, places
him in the
forefront of contemporary Indian poets writing in English.
One
of his outstanding talents is for observation:
Tired
with
the weight of wants
when
I go to my bed
she
sings lullabies.
(The
Maid of My Hope)
A
kind of uninvited metaphysical longing seeps through the poems. There is a well of great depth in Gill's
poetry which makes
for exciting reading.
The best poetry in Shrine is strong in authority. For example, in the poem "Tenant":
The tenants in me/live free/Yet they condemn me/for this and
that . . . where the
experience of putting
ourselves in the persona's
space is both invigorating and
liberating, rather like going into another dimension.
This
collection is important, then,
because it is
so vivid, so richly evocative, so simply complex about painfully complex
areas; the conditions that attach themselves to people, places, and memories and are forbidden because of the
danger inherent in them.
This
is a handsome book, which is
eminently readable and will undoubtedly attract many readers.
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