Helen Laycock has just released her triumphant new collection; Elemental. It’s a wondrous gathering, dividing her work into the four states of Air, Fire, Earth, and Water.
The Pushcart nominee has long form of course, conjuring-up vivid and visceral imagery. This collection does nothing to break this run. It’s not a smooth read however, as image after image stops the reader short in their tracks.
A personal favourite is ‘Hare’. A panicked dash is described; “He unfolds. Elongates, bunches, elongates, bunches; a meadowloom.” Eventually; “…the brown blur in the green chicane, now barely a timberknot.”
Laycock is never afraid to explore the grim or gruesome undersides of the world around her. In ‘Broken Aeroplane’ a thankfully minor incident results in the observation; “part of the wing is missing, not the bones but the skin…” and that mid crisis, “the seats look like rows of dark headstones.”
There are a brace of poems about whales within. Whale Fall shares a final, terminal, descent; “a drifting torpedo of corrugated meat…”; to become; “…rasped to a petrified harp of bones…”
Her other collections; (Wind Blown,13, Rapture, Breathe and Framed) are still available and also highly recommended but this work ratchets up her distinctly recognisable creativity and style another a gear, and should be read without qualification or delay.