Books

Review by Francis Shepard

I’m not qualified to comment on this work, first because I feel faint at any mention of blood, second because it draws on mythology I’m unfamiliar with and third because this is part of a fantasy tradition of which I’m likewise pretty ignorant. And yet I recognised the themes of rebellion rising from ancient gods that continue to dwell beneath the roots of the forest, and wished they would hurry up about it. This was concentrated in the first four pieces, Sleep, This is a Spell for Courage, The Roar in Response and The Darkness at the Heart of the Forest. These poems embody insurrection, that of forest creatures, man and beast, against the dead world of the oppressor. They are shot through with references to contemporary struggles – class, race, gender, sexuality. The first lines of The Darkness at the Heart of the Forest are a call to action, a mythologising of resistance.

We are born alone.
We die alone,
is the lie that you have been fed.
The forest remembers.
The forest always remembers.

All of us should take heed.

These are clean poetic lines. The metaphors are not overstated. You can feel the force of the stage delivery.

That is how the collection – of verse, playscript and short story – comes across. It is made for performance. I enjoyed There Once was a Man, a 25-page, three-act drama, but felt the short stories needed shaping. The narrative thread in each was evident, but there should have been more-obvious gathering of force as the stories progressed, the endings more-climactic. But, as I have stressed, I am in unknown territory and may have mistaken Davis’ purpose. Further, the text has an element of Horror to it, a genre of which I know nothing. It is not for the faint-hearted. Davis’ method is to use graphic language for devouring of prey in Baba Yaha’s Hare, the awfulness of battle in Guest of the Gaunt, the sufferance of wounds in Fugue Sinfonia and suffocation in Werifesteria. Repetition, used to such effect in the collection’s opening poems, is less a part of prose-writing.

Nevertheless, in the whole composition, I was made to re-think the Robin Hood legend, thinking it might serve as a guiding fable for our times.