From the intrigue of his earlier poetry in fatalism and the mysteries of character, Alan Gould’s interest has moved to music. In many of the poems in this book, the folk songs or the homages to Vaughan Williams, his enquiry is one of synaesthesia: What is it we see when we hear? In meditating this the poet prefers the crisp, accessible, narrative voice to the philosophical.
Here are ballads and celebrations, homages to past authors who have been his spiritual companions – Graves, Yeats, Shakespeare, and tributes to the Finnish resistance to Soviet aggression in 1939. There are some ‘equivalents’ to popular folk songs, and the volume’s title poem, a commemoration of the extraordinary George Street dancer of VJ Day 1945.
