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Gaps<\/em> is the debut pamphlet from Jenny Danes, a winner of The Poetry Business New Poets Prize 2015\/16. Comprised of 17 poems (23 pages of poetry), Danes\u2019s pamphlet corresponds to the dictionary definition of \u2018gaps\u2019 as differences between views, situations, or ideas (Collins).<\/p>\n The following lines from the title poem encapsulate the self-conscious choreography of steps through each other\u2019s language that the speaker of the poem and her German partner undertake. These lines serve as an abstraction for the entire pamphlet:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2026What is this complete<\/p>\n chance that you and I were brought up in different tongues?<\/p>\n How is it that we would name the same object or feeling differently<\/p>\n and always have done?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is an assuredness of voice and technique at work here, which results in many of the poems interrogating the world in which the poet finds herself \u2013 never more so than in the aptly titled \u2018Moving to Another Country.\u2019 The poem opens with an image of \u2018rough beaches,\u2019 where<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From my sand-filled mouth<\/p>\n clauses trip and fall.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dislocation is a key theme throughout: the reader is witness to the constant play between the insider and the outsider. As such, it is perhaps hard not to view these poems without the uncertainty of a post-Brexit Britain in mind (at the end of the pamphlet, the poet returns to England). It is no accident that the poems open up into white space \u2013 there are very few full-stops at the end of Danes\u2019s poems.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Like many of the poems, \u2018Moving to Another Country\u2019 is full of surprising twists. The humour of lines such as these<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I make three faux pas in a row<\/p>\n that are all to do with drinking<\/p>\n <\/p>\n hints at the stereotype of the drunk British tourist abroad. Danes is keenly alert to the nuances and comedy of translation and cultural intersection. In the penultimate poem, \u2018Things I Left in Germany,\u2019 three of the items the poet lists are a \u2018thicker skin,\u2019 \u2018a nostalgia for England\u2019 and \u2018a language I\u2019ll slowly forget.\u2019 There is a refreshing clarity and honesty at work here.<\/p>\n At the end of the pamphlet, the poet\u2019s playfulness reaches its pinnacle in \u2018Deutsch,\u2019 a poem that riffs on untranslatable English idioms and sayings:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Oh but come and chat out of the little sewing box!<\/p>\n How deep is the sea? I am as happy as a snow king,<\/p>\n I\u2019m on cloud seven, tousled and cosy with my tootle sack<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not only does Danes have a sharp ear and eye for detail, but her poems are what Helen Mort, judge of The Poetry Business 2015\/16 New Poets Prize, describes as \u2018anthropological.\u2019 These are \u2018elegantly-crafted poems that stand back and take a good, hard look around the room, finding a fresh language for what they see\u2019 (Mort).<\/em><\/p>\n