Reviewed by Beatriz Copello
Clarion
by Jenny Pollak
Liquid Amber Press
ISBN 978-0-6457131-0-7, June 2024, Softcover, 98 pages
Clarion by Jenny Pollak is a stunning collection which blends poetry and imagery in a profound and deeply moving way. Through both words and photography, it honours and remember a chorus of cherished casuarina trees, their voices lost to the sea as the sand buried their song. Jenny Pollak is a visual artist and poet, her poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies.
The work of the poet and artist breathes life back into these trees, guiding the readers through a landscape of destruction and renewal as she leads us through the wreckage, we too, are drawn into a love affair with the uprooted and displaced.
This book is a poetic and visual artistry, it is also a love song shaped from nature’s elements — sand, salt and time. Pollak reminds us that sticks, though broken, remain strong, wild and full of untamed beauty, capable of profound acts of resilience and grace.
This collection of poems has been divided in three parts “Clarion: a narrow-tubed war trumpet”, “An irresistible church” and “A reconciliation of parts” it also contains Notes, Acknowledgements and information about the author. There is also a large quantity of fascinating photos that have been manipulated by Pollak in a photographic editing program.
Who is “Clarion”? Clarion is a female tree, she has a woman’s voice, gentle, sensitive and heartfelt. She tells us her thoughts and feelings and the reader will feel and see what she feels and sees. The poet does this with talent and grace through images created by words.
Some of the lines in the collection deny harmony which is something that the human brain searches for but this absence of harmony creates powerful moments.
I would say that Pollak’s style is quite unique. For example she has many one-word lines amongst six words lines, is the same way her paragraphs can be from one word to nine or more lines. Unusual? Yes, but so creative, intelligent and poignant lines. Another characteristic of the poet is the creation of a musical rhythm and spirituality like the following section from “Clarion”:
How much more appropriately could god reside
than in the grasses
Who lend their bodies to the slightest
inclination of breezes
or cool as a psalm
in the slow rocks
The ones that have fallen just so
doing their quiet work
like god’s spleen
Or otherwise
in the pale rounds of the lichens
like careful
explosions
There is sadness, melancholy and pain in a some of the poems but these are coloured by strength. The images are powerful, leaving behind a sense of loss but also of renewal.
In the section of the book titled “a reconciliation of parts” there is a poem that really touched me:
I’m done for
Done in
Undone
Struck down
by a thousand pricks of shimmering
light slipped sideways
inside my retina
losing my mind
Unhinged by sun
a hip of rock
this strip this smiling
lip
of sand this topaz
tongue
the sea that sits
so still and flat it’s stolen
the sky
This poem like so many in this collection, has a visceral quality, where light, sound and sensation blur together in a moment of overwhelming intensity. The imagery is sharp and unexpected, pulling the reader into a dazed, dreamlike state. The tension between stillness and movement and between silence and sound is impressive. Impacting and powerful equally is the moment of being ‘unmade by song’ as if the speaker is dissolving into the very element around her. This is a beautiful collection.
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.