I couple Hannah Copley’s Lapwing and Eric Kocher’s Sky Mall together in this review because they share two traits: the first is a significant degree of repetition in both subject matter and phraseology, and the second is a degree of the prosaic in the writing.
Unsure what to make of Lapwing, I put it aside after first reading it a couple of months ago; but coming back to it I was again struck by just how much the repetition got in the way – both in individual poems and across poems. Having a collection with a single theme is, in my opinion, particularly difficult to carry off without banging the same drum over and over; I think you can all too easily lose a reader along the way, especially if they are hoping for some variation. (This is an observation I’ve made about other collections in the past.)
The same is true of Sky Mall, not only in terms of theme but also layout – nothing but couplets throughout. And given the nature of the language, I wonder if the format has been chosen in order to try and accentuate the poetic when the language is in fact prose-heavy. Again I was left wanting some variation in a pamphlet which seemed a little too self-indulgent.
Obviously there are people who like both collections – the publishers for a start. It’s just that personally I’m not a fan.
Ian Gouge - Writer 