Small Wind

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Small Wind

Category:	Poetry
Author:	Dagmara Igals
Publisher:	Melrose
Price:	£8.99
ISBN:	1-905226-34-9
Pages:	128
Reviewed in issue:	2

Small Wind is a small book in every sense, containing 120 pages or so of short, sculpted and often elliptic poems. Dedicated to the poet's late friend, artist Janet C. Bosse, the book collects fifty or so poems written over the past twenty years.

There is much that could be beautiful here, a keen imagistic eye, an ear, perhaps attuned through the poet’s Latvian lineage, focused on the music of scene and phrase. However, the poems mostly read like initial sketches rather than realised works, and too often lose their potential in a quiescence of muted tones.

I found the book to be frustrating, having enough allure to engage the mind’s poetic sensibility ('A Naive History', 'The Melting Star of David’, ‘The Red Ice Door', 'Seasons'), and yet seeming to shy from fullness and realisation, as though the poet-as-artist cannot bring herself to press harder with the pencil of her gift. This is a shame, as the results would be worthy of deeper investigation.

The book itself is a nice enough object; the cover features a painting by the author (a visual artist of note), which seems fitting in its almost colourless burgundy-brown. My favourite moment comes at the end of 'Reversal Of Errors' in the line 'anima / your time will come / to lure the Mt of / Everest / still closer / to the sun'. By the end of Small Wind anima continues to wait.

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