{"id":625,"date":"2010-04-09T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=625"},"modified":"2010-04-09T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T17:00:00","slug":"fiona-sinclair-reviews-anna-woodfords-party-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/fiona-sinclair-reviews-anna-woodfords-party-piece\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiona Sinclair reviews Anna Woodford's Party Piece"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anna Woodford: <\/span>Party Piece<\/span> The Poetry Business 2009<\/span>


I think the one line that best sums up Anna Woodford\u2019s intentions in her pamphlet <\/span>Party Piece<\/span><\/a> comes at the end of her poem \u2018Taking in the Washing\u2019. Here she tells us \u2018\u2018I cling to our line\u2019s unbrokenness: it extends into our future and past, at the far end Gran is dollypegging Dad\u2019s nappies.\u2019\u2019 She is seeking therefore in these poems to maintain a familial continuity between herself and her grandparents. Interestingly, the focus is almost exclusively on the men of the family.  Mother and grandmother are marginalised to the odd line and one rather disparaging poem in which the narrator in a somewhat judgemental tone examines the role reversal between mother and daughter.<\/span>
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The men however are celebrated for being hard working and practical. Grandfather was a miner \u2018\u2018solid, dependable\u2019\u2019, father is comfortable \u2018\u2018at home painting the hall.\u2019\u2019 and her partner returns from B and Q \u2018\u2018head full of wiring.\u2019\u2019 I feel Woodford admires them because they provide security for their families, a virtue that seems old fashioned today.  Her language is colloquial as befits her subjects. She often describes the men by their actions, for example father buys her a desk as an unspoken sign of love. But where necessary she will use a striking image to make a point.   The poem \u2018Blackie Boy Roundabout\u2019 becomes an elegy for men like her grandfather whose colliery and community were wiped out by the 80s pit closures. Thus the eponymous roundabout is described as \u2018\u2018a stone wreath laid to rest in the rush hour.\u2019\u2019<\/span>

The most joyous poems for me were where Woodford writes openly about a satisfying romantic relationship \u2018\u2018getting better with age.\u2019\u2019 Humour is employed effectively throughout the collection and comes into its own here; from the saucy post card imagery of \u2018Taking in the Washing\u2019 where \u2018\u2018next to your boxers, my bra is undone.\u2019\u2019  to the delightful \u2018Birdhouse\u2019 which wittily uses the extended metaphor of a caged bird scaling \u2018\u2018the heights of an aviary.\u2019\u2019 to evoke the female orgasm. <\/span>

To her credit Woodford in other poems, revisits a past that is not so quite so rosy thereby giving the collection balance. A vicious teacher is recalled and so is a youthful abortion. But there is no sense of self-pity or bitterness in these poems, more a feeling of reconciliation with the past, a tone which chimes with the work focusing on family. A few poems bring us up to date by dealing with what appears to be a more first-hand experience of motherhood, again adding to the sense of continuity felt throughout the work.<\/span>

Given that these poems create a family history, I did wonder why \u2018The Tree\u2019 and \u2018The Runaway Piano\u2019 were included, because fine poems as they are, they do not seem to fit thematically with the work as a whole.  Nevertheless it is refreshing to read an optimistic poet writing positively about her past.<\/span>

Fiona Sinclair<\/span><\/a>



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Anna Woodford: Party Piece The Poetry Business 2009I think the one line that best sums up Anna Woodford\u2019s intentions in her pamphlet Party Piece comes at the end of her poem \u2018Taking in the Washing\u2019. Here she tells us \u2018\u2018I cling to our line\u2019s unbrokenness: it extends into our future and past, at the far […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}