In this, his fourth volume of poetry, Kelwyn Sole eschews the sometimes syntactical gravity of his previous collection and reaches something of a crossroads in the life of a poet. We read that “the terms used [ ] to fix meaning have vanished”. The line on the page is broken mid-stride with an elliptical space, suggesting an acknowledgement of rupture and challenge.
The poet knows precisely where he is. He writes from that place, he writes out of that place, he lives “in a house which is slowly becoming my body”.
A generosity of spirit finds voice in the poet’s joy of a cricket’s existence, as any conceit of expression becomes a “minor miracle” to be celebrated. As if in balance, the poet carries that which is anti-life, that modern retrogressive gene in the culture, which not only threatens collective existence, but threatens all art: consumerism, greed and self-interest begin at infancy, with “miniscule / consumers already ravenous / for birthday presents / and solicited affections”.
There is a true humility in searching for the right description of a life “lived / in the labyrinths between the seconds”, a celebration of life’s spider web, “its mystery of enclosure”. To cohere this life, to keep all the pieces together, and still to have joy in this process that is never guaranteed to work out, requires critical awareness couched in self-reflexive empathy: “So what” the poet explains, “we’ve not had a thought all afternoon so what” and goes on to suggest “listen, smell taste, touch, see”.
The point seems less to caution against taking things for granted, than to open a space of awareness within the subject that can only be taken after the “the first / mortifying / necessary / step” of suffering the impoverishment of “a lack of awareness / a looking always / somewhere else.”
This volume of poems is precisely such an exercise of maintaining the imperative to see, while acknowledging the persistence of that which prevents us from seeing. It is this balancing act between desire and necessity, that makes Mirror and Water Gazing such a compelling collection.
Sole, urban and urbane, critical and sometimes savagely satirical, empathic wanderer through the streets and corridors of hearts and cities, modern Narcissus rubbing the sleep out from his eyes, steps deftly to the side. To read him is to travel the road “between the desert and the sea”, it is to be “deceived by mist imminent with rockfall” to be “between the wetlands and the mountains / of the moon / known / neither to toad nor buzzard.”
This peripatetic poet holds out a hand to the reader who requires no sign-posts or maps, only the certainty that the road is long and that while everything of interest and of value happens alongside, or off the beaten track, it is the road itself which must be travelled. “I may be here to greet you, / if you come.”