Beyond the Border and other poems product reviews

My personal view of what constitutes poetry has morphed over time from a rigid perspective to an immensely wider understanding of what makes words so powerful. When I was a child, a poem was a mathematical construction of metre and rhyme, so rhythmical that it begged to be set to music. At this stage the words were secondary to the beat. As a teenager, however, I came to the gradual understanding that the words themselves are the important element, not the constrictive framing of them, and that the essentials of a good poem are the story they tell or the mood they evoke. Owen Marshall's latest collection fulfils those criteria; he writes of the joys and the losses, the observations and aspirations of the human condition, frequently linking his own experiences to universals. This last aspect is what makes his words resonate with the reader.

It is possible to read this book in any order. Each poem is self-contained, with the length varying from five lines (At The Zoo and Pecking Order) to three pages (Five Apologies - although it could be said that this is actually five poems on related themes). Most are less than a page which makes it easy to pick up the book and just read one or two at a time. They are generally written in what is variously known as heightened prose, blank verse, or prose poems under the simple umbrella term of poetry, but the words when combined in this way are more than just a collection of sentences. The reader is seduced into visualising the poet's observations, relating them to his personal journey seen from a new perspective. I found I was drawn to Mr Catarrh as it brought back memories of my first walk along a London street in winter many years ago. The pavement was dotted with small puddles of phlegm coughed up by smokers, interspersed with piles of dog faeces. I was revolted but quickly learned to watch my step and always wear footwear with good soles!

Marshall toys with words, playing with comparisons and alternate meanings. In Dispositions he offers a tongue-in-cheek juxtaposition of pate de foie gras, caviar, and crap. Splitting a word over two lines gives different interpretations according to how the reader approaches them. When reading Anzac Cove I understood the word "thank/fully", split over two lines, as two single words before realising they could also be seen as a compound with a very different meaning. Imagery is rampant throughout, with recollections of time spent abroad, life within Aotearoa New Zealand itself, and references to those he was close to but who have now passed. The poem which gave this collection its title, Beyond the Border, celebrates Vincent O'Sullivan, contrasting his life with his existence now "in some country which has no hindrance to the mind". A charming and somewhat poignant summing up of what it means to be dead.

There are some wonderful turns of phrase. Two stood out for me. "The room side of the ranch sliders" in A Refutation of Global Warming is an innovative way to describe where an aging person finds his comfort level. Disposition immediately calls to mind the way that an animal will lie on its back and bare its belly when it trusts its human - this poem describes the way the small waves of the "submissive sea" are no longer "breakers, just smooth bellies rolling in". There are many other moments like these; part of the pleasure in reading through each poem and stopping to think about it before moving on is the way they continually recur.

One final word about the cover graphic. When I first saw it, I instantly thought of Central Otago, the stark landscape and the weather worn galvanised shed. (It could equally well have been a drystone cottage.) I checked and, sure enough, the artist Sir Graham Sydney is from that area. It is a part of the country that I know very well, having spent a great deal of time there. The lone shed sums up the isolation and self-containment of life in that part of the world; it serves as an invitation to the reader to turn the page and explore inside.