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Review
Jenny Morris' poems stand at the edges of forests following the trails of fairy-tales, noting occasions of unhappiness. Stepmothers and stepchildren, husbands and wives dealing with furies, powers of transformation, spells, losses. It is not a comfortable world, nevertheless it presents itself and has to be faced calmly, wittily. The dangerous enchanted forest opens on to American scenes, wider, less closed in by history and myth, then leads to a few expressly lighter poems, but the overall tone is rich and dark: it is the sane end of the lunatic moon.
Review by George Szirtes
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About the Author
Jenny Morris was born in North Yorkshire and spent some of her childhood in Scotland. She writes poems and fiction. Her writing has been published in the UK, USA and Australia. She has lived and taught in Norfolk, Dorset, Sussex, Kent, Surrey, Wiltshire, Hertfordshire, London, Germany and Singapore.
A sequence of her poems was awarded first prize at the Writers Inc Writer Of The Year competition in 2002 and she read these at the Barbican. Two years later, in 2004, a short story of hers was also a Writers Inc winner. Her poems and short fiction have been recent prize winners in the Ver, Envoi, Literary Review, Aberystwyth, The New Writer, Faber And Faber, Avalon, Barnet and Pitshanger competitions.
Her previous two poetry collections are 'Urban Space' and 'The Sin Eater'.
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A SISTER'S STORY
When I went to pick mushrooms,
I passed my baby brother on the step, grave,
putting beech leaves on his head.
He waved. Our house was a grey lump
midden like. Hare hung from a doornail
by bloodied fur. The sky
a heavy lid lowering a swollen sun.
Trees dripped. Mist threaded pine needles,
shrouded yellow chanterelles.
When I returned cold
with my hirpling father
the soup smelled good
thick herby leveret fragrance
simmering on the fire.
My stepmother showed her axehead
teeth, dished it up.
We made to devour.
"Where's wee lad?" My father's moustache
glinted with broth.
Then we saw in her ladle
a small foot. In my bowl tiny fingers
floated to the surface.
Scent of fear in the room. Gagging.
Hinges creaked like my father's curses.
At once the moon was a skull
coffined in our windowpane.
Soon the devil will swing
through my stepmother's bones.
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ARIZONA PROSPECT
This old photo pulls me in, keeps me out.
Cloud-filmed metal skies threaten a trailer park
of twenty shoebox forts eyed with mean windows.
Telephone wire grids cage sentry trees
and the odd cactus with outstretched arms.
One road only leads away
up to the horizon through desert and canyons.
In the foreground dust and stones.
On a rusty boulder this thirtyish blonde
smiles with confidence at the photographer.
Her shorts and top so tight, exposing flesh
so pale and so much. Those blown out
soft parsnip legs, blue veined, must shimmy.
She may say, “Are you serious? Do I give a damn?”
Here is a six-legged spider playpen
where a sickly infant kneels in his own mess
pressing his small face into the netting.
This outpost has a torpid feel.
Dry heat and boredom rise from the paper.
Taken the year I should have been in Arizona
but stayed instead in the cool Kentish damp.
This photo flickers my interest in its strangeness.
I am distanced by what could have been.
By now this child must be an adult.
Has he escaped yet? And is her smile
still so sure and satisfied?
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IN VINO VERITAS
The caged bird never sang in there,
drab curtains drawn, the fire weak.
The woman chose her words with care
her husband stared, would seldom speak.
Their daughter left to drift abroad
to risk her soul, to ride the wind.
Her parents’ dreams passed unexplored.
Their lives were always disciplined
as chained together, occupied
with spinning out each threadbare day
their discontent intensified.
They opened wine one Christmas day
and drank it with unpractised grace.
The fire died, the rain began
when, maudlin, fond, she stroked his face.
“I never loved you,” said the man.
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WET DAY DANCING
Slippery minnows of rain
dive into puddles.
It’s raining fish; sharp and slithery.
A herring slides, gleams
into Sadie’s camisole.
Wet and cold, it kisses
her flesh, dissolves to nothing.
In a downpour of pipefish
she dances on the pavement
face uptilted to the silver taste.
A shoal of sprats flickers past.
Small dabs plip down, fizz, expire.
Under a broken gutter she is caught
by a deluge of infant sturgeon
thrashing through her hair
with shining scales.
The shower stops. She turns
and turns, the lacy petticoats
flaring out, cascading tadpoles
on the flagstones.
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