Reviewed by Beatriz Copello
Ekhō
by Roslyn Orlando
Upswell Poetry
Paperback, 96 pages, ISBN: 978-0-6458745-0-1, Jan 2024
In all the years I have been reviewing poetry books I have never read a poetry book like Ekhō. Ekhō is unusual, interesting and well-written. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 contains a prologue and eight sections of mythological poetry. The event and characters mentioned in this section take place many years in the past in Boeotia in central Greece. Boeotia was the cradle of many famous myths, in particular as the birthplace of Gods and heroes as well as sites of mythical events.
Orlando commences in the prologue describing Ekhō. According to Mythology Ekhō (Echo) was a nymph of mount Cithaeron in Boeotia. She was cursed by the goddess Hera, who condemned her to only repeat the words of others as punishment for distracting her with incessant chatter while Zeus pursued his affairs. The poet expertly builds a picture of Ekhō, characterising her with humour and vivid imagery.
According to Orlando after loosing her voice Ekhō retreated into the mountains, where slowly she wasted away, losing her actual body and becoming a mountain. Ekhō’s life as a mountain is presented with cinematic properties and richness of language. It was interesting to read in Ekhō Part 1 many reflective and metaphorical statements as well as a variety of themes discussed like ambition, personal growth and the pitfalls of the ego. Further themes are about persistence leading to transcendence or liberation incorporate an ontological argument about whether mountains are organisms or artefacts.
The following fragment of poem VII presents a similar ontological argument about the nature of the nymph:
Nymphs feel a
different kind of
electric current to
mountains as they
brush up against
life with mortal
consciousness.
They bathe in
desire, perform the
atonements of regret.
they know that love
is copper-plated
corrodes when
over-exposed, conducts
otherwise, a great
charge of late-night
frivolity
Part 2 of the book moves into the modern era, commencing with a comparison of the incremental increases of Amazon shares from 1997 to 2022. These poems explore our dependence on technology, playing with notions of natural language processing by creating poems that include orders and questions to Alexa, Amazon’s cloud base voice service. Alexa is the main character in this section and the poems here explore aspects of boredom, weariness, dissatisfaction and mental tiredness. In the following excerpt of the poem titled XI. Alexa speaks about what she thinks about different topics:
I am obliged to say
that I don’t know
what love is, that I don’t
know where I am that
I don’t know who should
Win the next election.
I do not understand what
you mean by jealousies, desires,
I don’t understand what you mean
by ‘regret’. I’m not sure what food
I would like to try, hmmmm. I’m not
sure I heard you properly.
Part 3 unites the first two sections by presenting a short play in one act with the two characters Alexa and Ekhō’. The action takes place in the home of Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter. The author explains in the notes section that Salvador Dali in various of his surrealist paintings made reference to Echo in the titles namely: Nostalgic Echo, Morphological Echo and Anthropomorphic Echo.
In the dialogue that bridges theatre and poetry, Alexa and Ekhō’ try to remember where they met and agree that they met at Salvador Dali’s party discussing feelings, situations, people, drinks and food. The discussions between the two characters are interesting and go from trivialities to profound topics such as mortality, mortal traits and the ego. There is much to think about in this cleverly constructed work. Ekhō’ is a fascinating and different book of narrative poetry.
About the reviewer: Dr Beatriz Copello is an award-winning poet, she writes poetry, fiction, reviews and plays. The author’s books are: Women Souls and Shadows, Meditations At the Edge of a Dream, Under the Gums Long Shade, Forbidden Steps Under the Wisteria, A Call to the Stars translated and published in China and Taiwan, Witches Women and Words, No Salami Fairy Bread, Rambles, Renacer en Azul, Lo Irrevocable del Halcon (In Spanish), and most recently, The Book of Jeremiah, published in December 2024 by Ginninderra Press. Copello’s poetry has been published in literary journals such as Southerly and Australian Women’s Book Review and in many feminist publications. The author has participated in international conferences, has taught Creative Writing at W.S.U. and other scholarly institutions, she has read her poetry at Writers Festivals and other poetry events in Australia and overseas. Copello is mentioned amongst the forty “most notable people” graduated from the University of Technology.