Books

Review by Francis Sheppard

An eruption of jagged rock from under the placid meadows of Shropshire – that’s what the cover depicts. The beautifully taken photograph, of lowering cloud, sparse vegetation and unforgiving stone, is emblematic of Williams’ verse. Like the raw summit of the Stiperstones she does not attempt beauty, but beauty is there in the tough honesty of her statement. There is no channelling of other voices: what we hear is uniquely hers.

The poems are similar in that they confront death and the loneliness that follows. Each, though, in the manner of the 17th century, contains a clear ‘argument’ – a point that has to be made. The poems are integral, disciplined and sparing of extraneous material. This is a young woman at a particular juncture in her life. The book maps that state in the succinct language of everyday. There is nothing overblown.

The collection is organised into seven subsections, each one introduced with a title – Searching, Falling, Friendship, Goodbye, Reflection, The Journey, Beyond. Each title-page features an illustrative line-drawing. The sequencing indicates the narrative nature of the assemblage. This is a book about coming through – to the deeper meaning of the experience undergone.

This poet though could work to make each one distinctive in terms of language. The pattern is the rhyming quatrain, rhythm iambic, over most of the collection. Not to be criticised where the rhymes are so fluent, but you feel that a longer line would lead to new thought, new expression. For the moment, the elemental style is part of the verse’s force.

Hopefully, inevitably perhaps, other compilations will ensue from this one. Williams will chart the landscape that follows loss with equal good faith. Her approach will be the same one: primal energy. That is what is valuable here, her guts to go there, into those darker territories. Bereaved we all are; those slumbering private griefs will be brought into motion by Waiting for the blue and resolved by the poet’s admission, along with ours, that we are helpless in their face.