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\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Ghosting for Beginners<\/strong>\u2019 amusing title poem plays on the idea of social-media \u201cghosting,\u201d the act of going absent online after the end of a relationship, but there are many ghosts and hauntings in Anna Saunders\u2019 fifth\u00a0collection.<\/p>\n The poet\u2019s delicate touch evokes the\u00a0\u201c<\/em>gauzy blur\u201d of other-worldly encounters. A jealous lover returns\u00a0\u201c<\/em>shroud-bound\u201d<\/em>\u00a0from his suicide, and hovers over his beloved and her new paramour:\u00a0\u201c<\/em>All his sins are exfoliated now, his new skin\/light as bible paper, lucent as rain.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n These poems show not only how ghosts touch us, but also how that ectoplasmic life might feel; they lead us across the shifting boundaries between the seen and the unseen.<\/p>\n Ghosts are not all human,\u00a0\u201c<\/em>limbed and familiar;\u201d<\/em>\u00a0there are other essences too.\u00a0\u201c<\/em>And who will speak of the ghost of the rain?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Or of\u00a0\u201cthe spirit of the air\u2014the grassy fragrance\/ plaintive amid the pollution\u2026?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Hinted presences are almost tangible in this ravishing yet precise language.<\/p>\n There is variety of subject, tone, and approach, from humour to poignancy. Throughout, there\u2019s loss, and sorrow; a lost father\u2019s voice somehow becomes that of a bird, in\u00a0\u201c<\/em>the urgent song of a creature\/asserting its claim on a darkening earth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In this poem and others, that claim of the living contrasts with the ghostliness in rich physicality:\u00a0\u201c<\/em>the body\u2019s incense, smouldering.\u201d\u00a0For\u00a0\u201cAren\u2019t we all wild garlic\/rooted into the dark woods\/offering ourselves to the gods,\/cowering from rough paws,\/blazing our pure stars?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Whilst the rough paws buffet us, these poems delight and sustain.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Christine Whittemore<\/strong> is the author of Inscription<\/em>,<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>a novel.\u00a0(Sowilo Press, 2015) and \u00a0Sudden Arabesque<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>poems.\u00a0<\/em>(Oversteps Books, 2017)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n