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Wolf Review: She Never Talks of Strangers |
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Review in The Wolf, Issue 6, Spring 2004
By James Byrne
I first saw Heather Taylor read her work only a year or two ago. The fluidity and performative value of her poems impressed me greatly. In the audience someone told me how she had only been over from Canada a short while, and this was only her third reading. Nonsense I thought, she had been doing this a lot longer. Immediately I noticed how her work sang well from the page.
Of course any memorable poem should be able to lift from the page, and equally return back to it. Heather Taylor's first collection She Never Talks of Strangers achieves well on both fronts. Even from the opening salvo which harks back to her childhood home of Alberta we can see that Heather's attentiveness towards detail is acute though not overly tinselled. While many poems here hold a flurry of narrative elaborations, what's most enduring about this collection is how certain pieces offer a suddenness, an exactitude that shows how the author knows the immediacy of concision. Only one poem in and the reader comes to the beautifully concise pieces I.C.U. and Heart. A few pages on and there is a wonderful little poem called Jess which reads a little like a blueprint for the whole collection; carefully written, muscular and freckled with moments of sorrow. This is exemplified in Jess: To know she gave up / finally made all the attempts a reality / they couldn�t save her heaving body.
Consistently striking throughout is Heather's unerring bravery to show how our histories (hers and ours) are often on a loop. This is well accentuated by Suicide Watch, which tends to repeat itself somewhat, but in doing so hits you hard when it veers, and has three beautifully woven italicised fragments. Other highlights include The Dance and Dementia which both have subtle comic undertones. Overall this is a fine first collection from someone whose voice comes through either on page or stage. It is a little slim and devoid of some of her longer poems that I have enjoyed hearing at readings, but the tightness of her work has made leaps here. Undoubtedly her best work is still unwritten, and it will be intriguing to see if Heather directs towards performance rather than page. Not many poets consistently achieve on both fronts all that successfully, but She Never Talks of Strangers suggests that, for Heather Taylor at least, both are possible.
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