Patricia Prime
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SHRINE: POEMS OF SOCIAL CONCERNS
Patricia Prime
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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.
*Patricia Prime from