Child: New and Selected Poems 1991-2011 combines a generous collation of poems from Mimi Khalvati's five Carcanet volumes with previously uncollected sequences. She orders her work autobiographically, telling the stories of her life in four sections: childhood and early adulthood; motherhood; meditations on light; and love and art, circling back to childhood in her celebrated final sequence ('The Meanest Flower'). The figure of the child stands at the centre of the book, appearing in many guises: the poet as a schoolgirl on the Isle of Wight, or in half-remembered later years living with her grandmother in Tehran; her two children, now grown up; children in art; and an enduring sense of oneself as a child that is never left behind.
Here is the essential Khalvati: exquisitely nuanced, formally accomplished, Romantic in sensibility; rapturous and tender in response to nature, family and love. Her poems, David Constantine writes, 'say what it feels like being human, the good and the ill of it, with passion, tact and lightness.'
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It surfaces at moments, unlooked for when the little crookled child appears to bar your way, demanding no crooked sixpence as she stands behind the stile in her little gingham frock and the blood she has in mind drawn behind her gaze. SHANKLIN CHINE
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(@Carcanet, 24 November 2011, ebook, 180 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveInc)
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I've read some of the poet's work in anthologies but never a full collection, or in the case of Child, a volume of work from several collections. I enjoyed this collection a lot. I tend to avoid these larger volumes by poets I'm not familiar with but Child sounded like a good read and I read a lot of positive reviews. The theme of childhood as you can image runs through these poems as does motherhood and adolescence and growing up and growing old. The prose uses in the poems is very rich and vivid, almost beautiful at times. I liked the variation on style and length as well. Child is well worth a read.
