![\"\"](\"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/prosperos-bowl-full.jpg\" "\\"prosperos-bowl-full\\"")
<\/a><\/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
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Although Ken Head\u2019s poems have appeared widely in print magazines, online and in various chapbooks, Prospero\u2019s Bowl<\/em> is a long overdue full collection. In \u2018Passing Through\u2019, its opening poem, Head\u2019s strengths as a poet are immediately apparent. Within the compass of a blank sonnet, a form he frequently uses to good effect, we accompany the poem\u2019s protagonist on an early morning walk. Matter of fact and self-effacing, its opening lines set the scene with a minimum of fuss: \u2018In the morning early he walked down \/ the mountainside from the old village.\u2019 Soon, however, we are drawn on as precisely observed details accumulate:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The narrow donkey track, winding serpentine<\/p>\n and stony across the slope of the land,<\/p>\n kept the glitter of the sea below dark cliffs<\/p>\n always in his eyes. He breathed in thyme<\/p>\n and the scent of fresh-cut grass where men<\/p>\n with scythes, who nodded quiet greetings<\/p>\n as he passed, had cleared the path while<\/p>\n he was still asleep.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mirroring the twists and turns of the narrow path, Head\u2019s sinuous syntax is also sustained by its musicality and the rhythms of his language. Reading the poem aloud, one admires its cadences and the texture of its sounds: the contrast between long and short vowels, the repetition of sibilants and liquids. Frequently inspired by landscapes at home and abroad, many of the poems in Prospero\u2019s Bowl<\/em> meditate upon mankind\u2019s relationship with the natural world; and this is a theme which gives the poet plenty of scope to indulge his philosophical bent and to create a poetry of perception that is, at times, reminiscent of the work of that fine and somewhat undervalued poet Charles Tomlinson. In \u2018By Haweswater\u2019 Head captures aural impressions and beautifully evokes the quality of a silence: \u2018That there\u2019s no voice, not even birdsong, is what he notices, \/ that the silence remains untouched by any of the noise \/ he carries with him.\u2019 In this poem, consisting of\u00a0 two capacious stanzas composed in long loping lines of anything up to sixteen syllables, Head\u2019s technical skill is impressive, but even more so is a Wordsworthian reflectiveness as he moves beyond the limits of mere observation:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Years ago, he wouldn\u2019t have, but time\u2019s more powerful now<\/p>\n and landscapes like this, so filled with emptiness,<\/p>\n as mysterious as death. No compromise<\/em>, they say, keep moving.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The stoicism that is hinted at here is given further expression in \u2018Stepping Off\u2019, a tour de force consisting of three fifteen line stanzas depicting a bleak landscape shrouded in fog, a harsh world where men have struggled to survive:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Making and mending,<\/p>\n hauling supplies, turning backbreaking<\/p>\n labour into food, must all have been grist<\/p>\n to the mill in the battle against failure<\/p>\n of belief, a deal with the gods that might make<\/p>\n the world more knowable, less pitilessly<\/p>\n harsh.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Equally impressive is \u2018Something to Measure against\u2019, a study of poor villagers who eke out their living in a parched landscape where water has to be rationed: \u2018No water now \/ until late afternoon and nothing to be done \/ but study patience\u2019; while in \u2018Along Ashwell Road\u2019, where he describes some woodland, \u2018shawled \u2026 \/\u00a0 in separation like a gypsy woman\u2019, the harshness of nature is expressed in a more demotic terms: \u2018bleak as buggery on windy nights.\u2019<\/p>\n Having from the outset shown his ability to encapsulate a landscape or scene, Head proceeds, as his collection unfolds, to widen his historical scope and geographical range. \u2018Iron in the Soul\u2019, a sequence of six unrhymed sonnets, has an epigraph taken from Marilynne Robinson\u2019s novel Gilead: \u2018 History could make a stone weep\u2019. <\/em>In its opening section we are presented with a landscape in summer and the fair weather walkers who treat it with scant regard: \u2018At the top, they leave the litter from their picnics \/ and piles of dog crap inside plastic bags,\u2019 Soon, however, we find ourselves in a less familiar world where a warrior is \u2018testing the new grip \/ on his battle axe\u2019, a place where \u2018thick, white fog\u2019 does not merely make high ground uninviting for hikers but gives cover to raiders.\u00a0 The sixth and final section is an eloquent peroration on death and transience behind which one senses, perhaps, the ghost of Ecclesiastes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What we sweated to make<\/p>\n of oak, with iron and stone to bind it fast<\/p>\n against the years, lasted not much longer<\/p>\n than a leaf will feed a moth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2018Staying Power\u2019 the collection\u2019s second major sequence, consisting this time of ten sonnets, is set in Singapore\u2019s Chinatown. \u00a0Here the poet\u2019s eye roves like the lens of a photojournalist\u2019s camera. As elsewhere in the collection there is again a realization that the present is always informed by what lies behind it, that \u2018memories don\u2019t vanish like graffiti \/ under coats of paint. In \u20182: Shadow Play\u2019 Head evokes a past that seems colourful, almost lurid: \u2018opium fortunes \/ lost in fires, the gold, the gambling dens, young girls shipped over in boatloads \/ to work the brothels.\u2019 However, in \u20183: Chinese Whispers\u2019 we are enjoined not to romanticise the past: \u2018Don\u2019t let all that tourist bullshit fool you, \/ there are still hungry ghosts in every house.\u2019<\/p>\n In this collection there are so many fine poems that in the space available one can only finish by mentioning a few more personal favourites: \u2018Canal: 2011\u2019 with its \u2018silty ghosts \/ of the men who died digging it\u2019; \u2018Inside the Frame\u2019 a marvellously sustained meditation on an interior by Benito Barrueta\u2019; or the skilful reportage of \u2018Compliance\u2019 and \u2018On The Road from Nam Dinh\u2019, his poem in memory of Robert Capa. Prospero\u2019s Bowl<\/em> is a richly textured and deeply satisfying collection. Like the artefact for which it is named, it is finely crafted, inspired, and has deep roots in history and the natural world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n