IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
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RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
swell
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ALEX HALL is intrigued by a detailed history of Gaza that demonstrates its historic resilience and changing economy
Swell
Maria Ferguson, Penguin, £10.99
ALL poetry must come in some way from the personal experience of the person who writes it, but using your own life directly as raw material is very much the way many poets write currently. In Swell, Maria Ferguson presents a chunk of her life, from lovers and singledom through a miscarriage, to a successful pregnancy and a child.
Feminists argue that “the personal is political” — that patriarchy and gender-oppression are illuminated through the specific details of a woman’s life; and that a woman’s body is as fit a topic for poetry as nature or romantic love. These are also topics that allow women readers to feel their own experience is seen and valued. How far does Swell meet these objectives?
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