Neil Powell - Proof of Identity

Neil Powell, Proof of Identity (Carcanet)

Neil Powell's new collection describes itself well enough. The theme of the book is an exploration of who he is and where he came from.

The Journal of Lily Lloyd is a 29 page story of his grandmother's itinerant life in 1920's South Africa, when his mother was born. It took a while to start to enjoy this narrative written in an act of ventroloquism but it grows in stature as one becomes asccustomed to its adopted voice. Don't get too attached to the horse. I knew it would end up getting shot.

Blackborough Park is nowhere near as long at 120 lines but still 'extended' by today's standards. But the 'long poem' is making a gradual comeback, like fish into a cleaned-up river. Few will so successfully make as much out of so little as this, which does no more than watch watch and speculate upon a few figures in a park but it works for me now as well as it did when it first appeared in PNR.

But, back with the thematic thread, the title poem considers some old photographs of the poet's father, loving and respectfully, but with enough in them to allow room for one or two questions.

And then The Break is a quietly moving poem about leaving the family home. Powell is never overstated and never ostentatiously clever. The more you read of him the more one appreciates that in him and is grateful. He does a nice 14 lines, the best of these being Kempas Highway, 1966, ending,

For first love never disappears: it sets,

A pearl one neither loses nor forgets.

But it's not the only one worthy of mention. In In Sudbourne Wood, there is,

A blackbird clacks and flaps at whatever has fired

His tiny anger.

There is a lot to like about this collection. There's always been plenty to like about Neil Powell's writing.