In this nostalgically eclectic collection of poetry Petra Whiteley reveals
herself to be a mother, a nomad, a lover and a poet in search of a voice
outside her own native language. I think that not having English as a first
language – the introduction tells us that she was born in the Czech Republic –
gives this book an edge which a native speaker would not have. Taken out of the
context of her first language Petra is free to play with the English language,
to use it as a means to explore ideas and identities and she does this with
more freedom and fluency than one would if English were their mother tongue.
For example in the poem Black birds and white cars she plays upon the use of
the word ‘bird’ and it’s meaning as a derogatory term for a woman. The poem is
a quirky exploration of how people look at issues of race by mimicking the way
people from one street would react to a black police woman in uniform.
The issues of race and a search for a home land and identity are important
strands that run through this poetry collection with the image of the nomad
appearing as a recurring motif, reminding us of the title of the collection. In
the poems Stories of Travelling and Nomad’s Trail the sense of desolation and
loneliness is acute – ‘Mecca of rubbish, discarded people, blending with the
languid night trickling-crowds’- yet the reader is also given the idea that
the author would not give up her nomadic existence for anything – ‘Sometimes,
it is just a time – a time to go.’
I was pleasantly surprised by the humour in some of these poems, most notably in
Clouds where Petra Whiteley takes the idea of clouds as something which can be
washed in a machine and adopts the voice of God – ‘On Friday Morning, I left
the house in heaven. I’ve collected the clouds, put them into the machine.’ She
inverts the idea of God as something austere and impalpable, instead presenting
a profoundly human God, possibly female, concerned with prosaic matters like
laundering the clouds. At the end of the poem the God is disillusioned as no
one thanks her and declares ‘from now on: rain and thunder!’ I like this idea
of a feisty female God, one concerned with the domesticity of the skies.
The poem Broken Plumbing also made me laugh for its amusing characterisation –
‘Molly, Who lived on the third floor, always wore pigtails and spent time,
turning Shakespeare’s tragedies into scripts of porn.’ I think the factor
which makes her work amusing and touching is the juxtaposition of greatness
with the prosaic, Shakespeare with Porn and God with Laundry.
Some of the poems however are deeply touching. I particularly liked Neverland is
her Oyster, a tender compelling poem about the poet’s young daughter in which
she turns round the cliché ‘the world is your oyster’ and makes it into the
much more beautiful, playful and childlike, ‘Neverland is your Oyster.’ The
lines she writes about her daughter’s birth early on in the poem are
particularly tender and endearing – ‘You were supposed to be of hazy, sight but
your eyes firmly focused on mine.’ The love for the child comes across so
clearly that it is almost palpable in the words as they rise off the page.
I also like Petra Whiteley’s ideas about writing and about what it is to be a
writer. In the poem ‘I don’t write poetry today’ Whiteley demonstrates the
sense that if one is a poet sometimes one is always a poet, therefore the words
‘I don’t write poetry today’ become ironic as Whiteley is not longer able to see
anything in a light other than poetic, therefore she is able to see ‘toys with
secret lives,’ and ‘drizzle seeping into sun-grieving skin.’ Whiteley reveals
her poets eye throughout the collection but I think it is most apparent in ‘I
don’t write poetry today.’
Hope Estella Whitmore
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