Last week I received my copy of Ann Bagnall’s ‘Echoes on The Breeze’ , a wonderful collection of her micropoetry now published by lulu.com. See her wonderful blog and the link to the book at: http://annieb222.com/2014/09/13/echoes-on-the-breeze-by-ann-bagnall-paperback-lulu-au/
That link is for the paperback but her blog has another post with a link for the ebook available at Lulu also.
I will say at the outset. Ann if one of my dearest friends of many years, but that is not why I bought the book or why I write about it now. I did both because she is a superb writer, with a style and a sensibility that is very rare.
This book is deceptively simple – a series of her micro-poetry, none titled, one by one on small white pages. But within the simplicity is the complexity, the depth, and the poetry found.
Ann writes eloquently and often of love, and the beauty of the poems on that theme are resonant and there is much to enjoy for those in love, or in love with love, in her poems on this theme in this work. And beyond that theme she writes of life in a completely original way.
For me, it is the timeless strangeness in her work that really touches my soul. I love writing that takes you to another place, makes you see things completely differently, gives you that ‘ah ha!’ moment when you think ‘of course, of course, that is right, why didn’t I see that before?’, or even more strangely and wonderfully that sense you have entered another strange, dread, terrible, wonderful world where everything is heightened and also delicate. Ann’s writing is like that.
To fully convey this I am taking a liberty of reproducing a small amount of the writing in this review for illustrative purposes (Ann – I hope that is ok with you but what better way to convey the impact of your writing than with your writing?)
So, for instance, just ‘feel’ this poem from her collection:
‘He finds the silence
After heavy rain
Makes him wake in the night
Wondering
If the halls of heaven
Empty
Have fallen to echoes’
After reading it I am in quiet contemplation of the emptied. echoing halls of heaven. Who thinks like that? Well, Ann does, and it’s a treasure. Another example, a brief snippet from another of her poems:
‘The colour of the morning
Is always painted
On darkness’
And I’m thinking, of course, that is so right, and immediately I’m transported to the very earliest hours of dawn, watching that colour paint the sky as she so vividly describes with such delicate economy of words. Or a few more snippets from her poems as examples:
‘Thoughts of deeper things
And silver whispers
Creep across the clouds’
How wonderfully strange, trippy and kind of dread! Or:
‘The fireflies are whispering
The secrets of the moon’
And then I want to know the moon’s secrets, but with piquant regret realise I never will. Or a last example:
‘In the silence of the night
They whisper
Like the sand speaks to the sea’
And I’m on a beach at dawn, straining to hear the words of the sand to the sea. Just perfect!
The thing is, what I love about Ann’s writing is what I love about music and lyrics when they combine perfectly to take you to another dimension, another head space, another spiritual realm. And that’s the thing, finally, for me, Ann’s writing is inherently melodic and deep.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Ann’s style is uniquely hers and worth wide readership and treasuring. I hope by my humble review here I introduce her to new readers and that they too can enjoy her work in this work and at her blog.
Cheers
Helen V
helenvalentina 