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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are fifty-two complex, thought-provoking poems in this, Angela France\u2019s fascinating third collection, all of them engaged with what are clearly deep, lastingly cental preoccupations and, despite her view in \u201cAnagnorisis\u201d that \u201cMy only surety is carbon and water, ashes; \/ language as sensation, \/ no words\u201d, more than justifying the fulsome back-cover endorsements of Nigel McLoughlin, Deryn Rees-Jones and David Morley, who speak of the \u201cintegrity, thoughtfulness and care of her work\u201d, its \u201cuncanny command of language and image\u201d, the sensitivity with which she perceives the world \u201cas she searches for meaning in the ordinary\u201d and its \u201cgloriously sheared weight and shared music\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Early in the collection, her relationship with a grandmother figure and thereby with older women generally, \u00a0becomes the path via which she investigates, with great intensity, her premise that \u201cMen don\u2019t tend the fire; … They don\u2019t make old bones\u201d (\u201cThe Evolution Of Insomnia\u201d), whereas, as she says in \u201cCanzone:\u00a0 Cunning\u201d, life gives women ever greater power and wisdom as they age:\u00a0 \u201cYou always knew what you were, old woman. \/ I grew knowing the wink of your cunning, \/ the cackle and knock of a comfortable woman \/ who had aged past appearances\u201d.\u00a0 Women, it would seem, learn more with the passing of the years about themselves and survival than do men.\u00a0 It\u2019s a recurrent point about staying-power, made again in \u201cThe Visit\u201d, for example, where \u201can old man leans from a narrow bed and the colours of dying \/ are yellow and white.\u00a0 A sheet winds round him, rumples \/ to leave a scrawny leg exposed\u201d and in \u201cCounting The Cunning Ways\u201d, a poem in which an unidentified male figure, a grandfather perhaps, preoccupied all his life with an armoury of superstitious nostrums designed to keep misfortune and death at bay, \u201cso many ways to foretell death and disaster\u201d, such as taking \u201ca long way round \/ to avoid meeting a hearse head-on\u201d, not taking \u201cthe ashes out after sundown\u201d and refusing to \u201cwear anything new to a funeral\u201d, discovered at the end that death \u201ccame for him while he wasn\u2019t looking.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By way of contrast, France\u2019s unremittingly scalpel-sharp analysis of her relationship with the world suggests profound, perhaps lifelong, insecurities.\u00a0 In \u201cGetting Here From There\u201d, for instance, she speaks of her need to \u201cname where I tread \/ grass, rock, mud<\/em> \/ to fix the ground beneath me\u201d as if she doubts, not merely philosophically but physically,\u00a0 the reliability or permanence of the world\u2019s surface, whilst in \u201cHide\u201d, the poem which gives the collection its title, she writes about her need for concealment, disguise, hiding-places within which she can \u201cwait out seasons for a day \/ when clouds bloom into stories … \/ watch swifts skirl overhead, oblivious \/ to my hungry eye\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cI have always craved secret places:\u201d she says, \u201crooms within walls, smugglers\u2019 tunnels, \/ the bookcase that glides sideways \/ for a knowing touch\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s a perception of herself that goes back, she tells us in \u201cSpy\u201d, to childhood, when she \u201cmoved among\u201d other children \u201cto learn their playground games \/ and language,\u201d but felt that at least some of the boys were convinced that \u201cshe\u2019s mad, she is, \/ talks to herself all day!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There\u2019s a great deal more to be said about this aspect of the poems, the extent to which thinking about one\u2019s life is a task never completed, the struggle between feelings of belonging and alienation, the need to be oneself and yet not be alone, than can be said here.\u00a0 In \u201cHow To Make Paper Flowers\u201d, for example, she speaks of learning to \u201cBury the memories of your grandmother\u201d and of not thinking of \u201cyour grandfather\u2019s chrysanthemums, cradled in newspaper \/ and tied to his bike\u2019s handlebars \/ as he rattles home from the allotment \/ or the daisy-chain you hung \/ round your father\u2019s neck.\u201d.\u00a0 These are fine lines, simple, universal images of remembered loss, of deep affection.\u00a0 \u201cSam Browne\u201d works similarly as she remembers her father using Brasso, pungent, once smelled never forgotten, \u201ca metal tang in the throat\u201d, to polish metal uniform buttons and in a single, very moving line captures the ache of the loss of a parent:\u00a0 \u201cI breathe my dad<\/em> as he straightens his cap over his eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The frequency of France\u2019s use of the word \u201ccunning\u201d and words related to it suggests that it is a key to the collection.\u00a0 Its etymology, from the Old Norse \u201ckunnandi\u201d, \u201cknowledge\u201d and the Anglo-Saxon \u201ccunnan\u201d, \u201cto know\u201d, is many-layered.\u00a0 Associated with it is the word \u201ccanny\u201d, knowingness, craftiness.\u00a0 Equally, it suggests wit and wisdom, learning and erudition, as well as skill in the occult, deceitfulness, evasiveness and selfish cleverness.\u00a0 The Canadian novelist Robertson Davies wrote a novel entitled \u201cThe Cunning Man\u201d which is concerned, among other things, with shamanic and mystical power, whilst among the fallen angels in Book Two of John Milton\u2019s \u201cParadise Lost\u201d, there is no better term than \u201ccunning\u201d to describe Belial, whose words were \u201cfalse and hollow\u201d and who, \u201cthough his Tongue \/ Dropd Manna, could make the worse appear \/ The better reason\u201d … \/for his thoughts were low …\u201d.\u00a0 As France uses it, \u201ccunning\u201d is a word rich in ambiguity, a double-edged sword sometimes, perhaps, but always an indicator of the degree of her engagement with the challenge, as \u201cOther Tongues\u201d makes clear, of coming as close as possible to the inexpressible heart of the matter:\u00a0 \u201cWhen I say I\u2019m alone, I\u2019m lying. \/ My mother tongue sleeps under my skin, \/ bred in the bone, colouring my blood. \/ I speak from an echo chamber \/ where the walls pulse with whispers, \/ familiar cadences rising and falling \/ at my back.\u00a0 I speak from a limestone floor, \/ as familiar to my feet as are the bones \/ of the hill creaking between the roots \/ of great beeches.\u00a0 I speak with multitudes \/ in my throat, their round vowels \/ vibrating in my stomach, their pitch \/ and tone stiffening my spine.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Order your copy of Hide by Angela France from\u00a0 www.ninearchespress.com<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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