Weathering
by Ann Zell
Published By Salmon Poetry
Price £6.99
If a poem is about a single idea, then a collection of poetry should
be a complete experience - and that's what Ann Zell has produced in
Weathering. The art of Zell's work is that, even though each poem
possesses the freedom and imagination to stand alone, they combine to
form one complete, highly-structured movement of thought and
experience.
Weathering charts the poet's life from the tensions of family,
community and lifestyle on a potato farm in Idaho, and weaves the
reader through the further experiences of motherhood, politics,
friendship and escape.
n Zell's voluntary exile from the USA brought her to settle in West
Belfast in 1980. Since then, life in Belfast has had an immence
effect on her poetry. It has allowed her to bind together images of
bickering couples in Castle Street, idle teenagers in the City
Cemetery and the odd political demonstration or two - all this just
as competently as anyone who has lived here all their life.
Among the personal observations there are exceptional moments of
clarity, such as in ``Round trip'' where social ills and habits are
juxtaposed with a mormon pastoral upbringing. but as society beckoned
the poet, it seems to have brought with it the humour of ``walking
home alone, drunk'', and the politics of ``Resistance two-step'' and
`Anniversary march''.
Weathering is about existing. It is about womanhood and resistance.
And as one poem reaches into the next, so the reader is carried
through an experience that is theirs as well as the poet's.
By Michael Gallagher
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