Bodies. Rhythms. Motion. Sounds. All fours is a debut collection of poetry from Nia Davies, a book of rituals in language that stalk the space between what is uttered and what is meant. These poems are haunted by the strange traces of the longest words in the world and folk-mythic figures such as Sinbad, Eurydice, Mossy Coat, Pan and Baba Yaga. They pose riddles with multiple or mysterious answers. A swerving sweary jump into a terrain that is both comically musical and perplexedly political, All fours speaks of the (mis)adventures of sex and human communication, a life full-to-bursting with burning questions.
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[Because I was sleeping all over here / and here (ABOUT ME)]***
(@BloodaxeBooks, 3 July 2018, e-book, 80 pages, borrowed from @natpoetrylib via @OverDriveLibs)
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I'd never heard of the poet before but I like discovering new voices and I liked the cover. I thought this collection was just okay. I don't know if I'd bother to read subsequent work by the author. I found it a mixed bag. Some of the poems like About Me, Mossy Coat and With Sinbad work really well. Unfortunately, a lot of the poems left me cold. Many of the poems use stylistic devices that made them quite a slog to read, even confusing at times. This is especially apparent in later sequences such as from Cekoslovaskyaliastiramadiklarimizdanmsiniz or LONG WORDS which I found almost unreadable at times. It felt a great deal of the time that the poet was showing off and trying to be impressive. This is not for me.
