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R/£ A longing for the grass that's less green
February 17, 2008 Edition 1
Karina Magdalena Szczrek
A Fold in the map
by Isobel Dixon (Jacana) R110
Review: Karina Magdalena Szczrek
A Fold in the Map is Isobel Dixon's second volume of poetry. Her first, Weather Eye, won the Sanlam Literary Award in 2000 and was published by Carapace Poets the following year.
Dixon, a South African, now lives in Cambridge. Most of the creative tension in her work seems to be inspired by the kind of dislocation people experience under circumstances similar to her own. Her poems often capture the sense of belonging to a specific place as well as the simultaneous longing for another - something those of us who have lived in two different worlds will feel deep empathy with.
A Fold in the Map is divided into two parts: Plenty and Meet My Father. Although almost half of the poems in the first section are taken directly from Weather Eye, their interpretational framework is expanded in the context of this new collection. Dixon returns with fresh energy and insight to familiar themes such as journeys, family or self-discovery - also beautifully reflected in the personal cover photographs.
While many of her poems encapsulate isolated moments in time and space, like a girl's feeling of guilt and complicity in the skinning of a mole by her older cousin in The Skinning, others, for example The Growing Gift or Fruit of the Land, often read like stories spanning lifetimes where moments from the past merge seamlessly into the present.
Especially in poems like Plenty, Reach, Amanzi or Positano, Dixon makes inquiries into the consciousness of a person who has lived in different countries.
In the titular poem of the first part of the volume, the memory of skimpy baths during the Karoo "expanse of drought/ where dams leaked dry and windmills stalled" is juxtaposed with the present, self-indulgent cascade showers in an artificially heated home, presumably somewhere in England.
In Amanzi, the "emerald lawns" of Cambridge poured upon by rain trigger the memory of childhood prayers for rain during periods of extreme drought - both are recurring images in the collection. The poem also compares the security and affluence of the English city with the armed-response signs and child beggars in the streets of Cape Town.
A similar feeling of displacement is confronted in Positano where the self wishes for "This lustrous, postcard life" of a Tuscan holiday to replace the "dull domestic" version of oneself.
In other poems, Dixon further explores the dichotomy of split selves, perhaps best captured in Gemini. The poet asks what will happen when the twin nature of the self is reduced to one consciousness, will there be a feeling of relief or will she feel "obscurely troubled, phantom-limbed?"
As becomes apparent, many of these poems, overtly focused on intimate and individual experiences, do not lack a broader socio-historical dimension, which is most strikingly expressed in Back in the Benighted Kingdom. With a precision reminiscent of Wislawa Szymborska, Dixon evokes here the nostalgia for a mosquito bite bump to hint at colonial, "quieter, subtler ways/ of drawing blood".
In the second part of the book, Meet My Father, the emphasis shifts from the self to the father, or more precisely to the relationship between them. Dixon recounts a father's suffering and consequent death, and a daughter's coming to terms with his illness, then his absence, and the grief the void has left behind: "How it takes a lifetime/ to prepare for such a death./ And a lifetime after for the rest of us, recovering."
The poems here concentrate on the slow decline of the father into illness: his refusal to eat, his gradual inability to communicate, the pain he endures and other signs of his pending death, all located in the anonymity of hospital rooms and corridors. Eventually, After Grief portrays a life-affirming decision: "I shall have it, scent and life./ I will not bathe in only salt and blood."
The last few poems in the collection speak of transformation and healing: "After the amputation, bruising, weariness,/ this stony rest, his paradise,/ my mother's newfound flowers."
What characterises Dixon's poetry most poignantly is its accessibility, which should not be mistaken for simplicity. Written in free verse, her work exudes ease and unpretentiousness.
Dixon is fully in command of the poetic tools at her disposal. In her hands form and content intertwine naturally, never allowing the reader's attention to wane. Intelligent and sensuous, Dixon's poetry has the wonderful quality of being able to hold the essence of a variety of moods, places and people, which many readers, whether poetry lovers or not, will find engrossing.
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