Hearing Eye

No 64 in the Torriano Poetry Pamphlet series ‘Wry, meditative poems of search and longing, and of return to the human fold.’

My grandmother’s eyes were on me, all wet with tears
because I wouldn’t eat her dense yellow cheesecake from Old Vienna.
No, my mother said. It’s because she loves you.
Your grandfather’s rather odd at times, my mother said,
jumpy, because he was in a camp.
I knew about holiday camps. Practical jokes perhaps, booby traps.
The cheese plant in their flat tried to grow through the ceiling.
It needed sponging occasionally, and had little holes in it
to help it breathe.

For those who have been already delighted by Caroline Natzler’s poetry, this collection is long overdue; and for new readers it must be a joy of a discovery. Fold is her third collection and it’s not a full one but, thanks to Hearing Eye, at least we have this to be going on with. Each poem is sharp and intelligent, and together they combine to conjure a familiar world made quirky and original by the way Natzler interrogates it – although ‘interrogate’ is probably too pompous a word. These poems are anything but pompous; it’s a world, a life, that’s being scrupulously examined and all observations qualified, then qualified again. For the full review go to London Grip