{"id":6315,"date":"2014-02-07T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T09:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=6315"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:35:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:35:48","slug":"janni-howker-reviews-sue-millards-ash-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/janni-howker-reviews-sue-millards-ash-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Janni Howker reviews Sue Millard\u2019s ‘Ash Tree’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Brightness<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a testament to Sue Millard\u2019s exceptional skill as a poet that the poems in her collection \u201cAsh Tree\u201d have the tensile strength to contain the raw material of their contents.<\/p>\n

In these nineteen graceful and crafted works she shares the experience of loving her grandchild, Naomi, through her short life and her death from cancer. It is a tribute to that love and its apparent powerlessness in the face of death that it gives the reader the ability to face and understand the emotional stages she and the child have passed through, but it is her handling of such potent themes as rage, hope, helplessness, loss of faith, fear, the sheer anguish of witnessing suffering and grief in such simple and accessible language and images that is astounding.<\/p>\n

The ash tree of the title was and is a real tree felled to a stump in the garden in Sue Millard\u2019s home in Cumbria \u2013 a garden in which Naomi and her Grandmother shared many moments together. These remembered times inform the poems right from the beginning.<\/p>\n

In \u201cWild Strawberries\u201d hope appears poignantly intact but already in the first three lines a deep unease is signalled,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strawberries are gone. Your nimble hands<\/p>\n

seized them with glee when the shadowy side<\/p>\n

was still green-white.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is the economy with which these lines convey all the desperate complexities of hope in the face of a cancer diagnosis that impresses.<\/p>\n

Later, in \u201cMany Waters\u201d when,<\/p>\n

\u201chope is too stale for me to drink now\u2026\u201d Sue Millard again conveys, with breathtaking economy the near impossibility to write about grief:<\/p>\n

\u201cShut up the poems. I can only make<\/p>\n

stars that splash into uncontrolled<\/p>\n

wet angles, slashed across the white.\u201d<\/p>\n

The truth is however, that the formal dignity and control of Sue Millard\u2019s craft are precisely what allows the reader to bear the unbearable with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cMissing\u201d, with its unforced rhyme scheme and simple homely points of reference,<\/p>\n

\u201cI missed you by a quarter of an hour.<\/p>\n

I should have hurried through my morning shower,<\/p>\n

missed eating breakfast in the sleepy sun<\/p>\n

or read no emails, or replied to none,\u201d<\/p>\n

is masterly.<\/p>\n

The delicate trotting rhythm and repetitions animate the finest poem in this collection, \u201cPink\u201d, in which we witness Naomi\u2019s funeral procession,<\/p>\n

\u201cthat pink box in a white hearse is<\/p>\n

too small for you.<\/p>\n

A sailing group of pink balloons<\/p>\n

Learn flight with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The child though missed is never missing in these poems. That the poet\u2019s attention is so utterly focused ensures the validity of the poet\u2019s commitment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hold the brightness of you here,\u201d she vows in \u201cPutting away the toys\u201d and this she most certainly does. Not since I read Douglas Dunn\u2019s Whitbread award winning \u201cElegies\u201d in 1985 have I been so moved. I cannot commend Ash Tree highly enough.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Many waters
\n<\/strong>
\nSilence the birds. Their notes drop
\nsweet as spring, but hope
\nis too stale for me to drink now.<\/p>\n

Shut up the poems. I can only make
\nstars that splash into uncontrolled
\nwet angles, slashed across the white.<\/p>\n

Dry up the rain. I can water
\ndeserts with these tears, my face the shore,
\neach indrawn breath salt as the sea.<\/p>\n

Hush the goodbyes. I shall watch
\nwhile your river flows to the falls,
\nand try to smile for you.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Ash Tre<\/em>e by Sue Millard is published by Prole and is priced at \u00a35.\u00a0 Order your copy here.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Brightness It is a testament to Sue Millard\u2019s exceptional skill as a poet that the poems in her collection \u201cAsh Tree\u201d have the tensile strength to contain the raw material of their contents. In these nineteen graceful and crafted works she shares the experience of loving her grandchild, Naomi, through her short life and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-6315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6315","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6315"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23710,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6315\/revisions\/23710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}