Having read and enjoyed the odd poem by Heidi Williamson in journals such as the Rialto and Poetry News over the last few years I was intrigued to see how her first full length collection would hold up to scrutiny. A convincing and engaging voice is much harder to sustain over a collection of fifty odd poems than in one or two, however I was not disappointed, Williamson seems to have carried it off.
There is a thread of light running through this collection and no matter how dark her subject matter Williamson’s writing always seems to retain a feeling of hope and optimism. This is reflected in Williamson’s obvious attraction to all things scientific. Poems exploring such diverse themes as mathematics, computer programming and photography nestle comfortably alongside poems where the voice feels more “real”, more personal. Williamson is spare with her language and form, often favouring two or three line stanzas which allow the words room on the page to breathe and work their magic. The ideas of exploration, memory and discovery are evident throughout the book and these positive themes are present even in poems like Duty Of Balance III which is beautifully written poem about loss:
Now she was stowed in the house again,
he listened for her silences. Father
fussed over lunch, requisitioned
his presence to bolster the troops.
She sat in her old chair politely.
He broke the code. Held her
like she was still gone. It felt
like that day in the bombed-out house
when the top stair crumbled – leaving
him flexed on the tip of things;
grasping the duty of balance,
gasping for something to give.
One gets the sense reading these poems that Williamson has a lively and enquiring mind and this enables her to bring a freshness of vision to what could otherwise be slightly dull subject matter for non-scientists – a sestina about a Mobius Strip for example, or a meditation on friction. She constantly manages to give us new perspectives, and brings her subject matter alive in a very human way without overloading it with emotion. And always her poems seem to come back to light – electricity, the moon, aurora, static…
Williamson is not a poet whose writing style is loose or meandering. Her poems are tight constructs sparse in words, yet succinct with not a word out of place which befits their often scientific content. They put me in mind a little of the work of Tomas Tranströmer or Miroslav Holub. There are many poems here that have their grounding in science or history – or that take these themes as their starting point and then lead the imagination to some other magical place – Brodsky at the Milling Machine for example. However, despite Williamson’s obvious fascination for the scientific world (in 2009 she completed a residency at The Science Museum’s Dana Centre), this is a haunting and sensuous collection where scientific and mathematical ideas nestle cheek by jowl alongside very human sensations such as loss and grief and poems that feel more personal such as Circus Pony. Someone once said that the real truth of poem is in whether the reader feels it and believes in it and I absolutely believed in the girl standing
…daily by a tired wire fence,
calming the soft nose of a pony,
patient, headstrong, poised to bolt.
Electric Shadow is a PBS Recommendation.
Marvellous review. I've ordered a copy 🙂