SISTERS by Huw Parsons

'The thirteen poems in this collection range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the complex to the simple and from the serious to the humorous.

1. 'Sisters' has very little to do with female siblings and all to do with the writers-block Huw was suffering from at the time he wrote it. The first time I listened to this I felt that he was trying to write his way out of writers-block, which, he told me later, was exactly what he was doing. Incidentally, Huw has also told me that he feels that every poem he's written, particularly the early ones, will be his last before the need to write disappears along with the ability to do so! However, after a hundred-and-forty or so works and still counting, he's learnt not to worry about this too much!

2. 'Christmas Gifts' is typical of many of Huw's poems in that its narrative progression is driven along by the rhythmic patterns of its spoken lines.

3. 'Confused the Hours' is in essence, despite its black humour, a sad poem about Huw's mother who, very sadly, suffered from dementia towards the end of her life. Some people find this poem disturbing in the way that Huw uses tones of mockery for comic effect, but what I feel he's really doing is telling us just as it was and using humour to conceal painful feelings about his mum!

4. 'Decayed Decades' is a good title but one that looks better on the page than when heard spoken. It seems to me that the whole piece revolves around the central line “My heart beats on.”

5. 'Inspiration/Tribulation is as much a joke as it is a poem and none the worse for it too. I just hate poetry that's 'precious' and this certainly can't be described as being so.

6. 'My Favourite Things' is based upon the song of the same name as sung by Julie Andrews in the film 'The Sound of Music.' Like many such pieces Huw allows the ghost of the original lyrics to appear now and then.

7. 'Parisienne' is nicely read here by Huw's lifelong friend Phil Clark. It takes Sir Huw Casson's famous 1960's crockery design as an unlikely starting point and goes on to describe what the characters shown in the design might be doing and even thinking, eventually drawing you, the listener, into the scene in the last few romantic lines. Magic!

8. 'A Love Sublime' is a short poem about a very special day at Branscombe in Devon, when all was well with the world. It captures the euphoria of just being alive and a part of that beautiful place and the wider universe.

9. 'The Numbers Racket.' Who is this about I wonder? Can it be just one person or is it a blend of several – and just what is 'lopsided lust?'

10. 'The Phalanx' seems to me to be a little poem like 'Sisters' in that it's a piece of nonsense rhyme which has been written either all-in-one-go in an inspired moment or as a hard-worked, hard-won, multi-drafted piece.

11. 'What I Love At Christmas.' How many of us can identify with this I wonder? 'Oh at Christmas I do love to be far from my family, unobtainable by mail and texts and well rid of that awful pestilence
of pestering kids about the tree merry making. And the grown-ups slumped around endless telly, overdosed on glitzy Ferrero Rocher and fatuous celebrity, drunkenly advocating Advocat, or fretting and regretting that double-helping of torrid Christmas pud.'

12 'One Star Awake' ('Yeck Dudee Jonger.') A lovely inspirational poem about a gypsy friend of Huw's. Like all good verse this one runs away with its own momentum to finish on an uplifting note. This is a terrific recording too with a musical accompaniment by two sisters, Martha and Glesni Powell. Martha is sixteen and Glesni just twelve. Martha plays her composition on the harp, while Glesni adds the recorder to the choruses – and they both sing the old rhyme 'My Mother Said.' Really lovely!

13 'Six and Sixty.' How I wish I could write something like this but, thinking about it, I probably could if I set my mind to it. That's the nice thing about Huw's poetry, it often seems he's writing pieces we could easily have written ourselves. There's a big difference though between wanting to do something and actually doing it though isn't there, particularly this well and with such a lightness of touch.

Jill Hall. (Writer and Critic.) 12th May, 2014.

Huw Parsons was born in 1954, grew up in Llyswen, near Hay on Wye, and educated at Brecon Boys’ Grammar School and Chelsea College of Art.

He feels neither wholly English nor particularly Welsh, with his life’s diversity a social impostor and a cultural chameleon.

His influences: the poems of John Betjeman & Phillip Larkin, the novels of Leslie Thomas, the song lyrics of Sting & Jake Thackray.

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