A review by h2oetry
Division Street by Helen Mort
4.0
Surfaces and borders are the arena of interaction. Helen Mort’s collection of poems covers various types of conflicts and awakenings.
Whether it’s human to human, avenues or streets, life and/or death, land and rivers, the friction sets in motion meaning and feeling, whether negative or positive.
Striking miners struck by police officers. The battle between the differently named, or the named and the unnamed. As the preface states, “at the site of conflict, a moment of reconciliation can be born.”
“I stand at the junction,
watch the traffic lights
change amber to red.
Think of them,
there at midnight,
changing for nobody.”
Whether it’s human to human, avenues or streets, life and/or death, land and rivers, the friction sets in motion meaning and feeling, whether negative or positive.
“what she sees she cannot tell,
but what she knows of distances,
and doesn’t say, I know as well.”
Striking miners struck by police officers. The battle between the differently named, or the named and the unnamed. As the preface states, “at the site of conflict, a moment of reconciliation can be born.”
“Come back: we’ll take the slim, once-wanted moon,
unfashionable blackboard sky. No-one will miss
the world tonight. Let’s have the lot.”