A Feeling We Can Neither Know Nor Name: Sarah Jackson's 'Pelt'

Sarah Jackson joined the monthly reading group 'Nottingham Stanza' yesterday and it was very exciting to have her with us.  The group, nominally the local chapter of the national Poetry Society, has been reading a contemporary poetry collection every month for almost the last five years.  This was the first time I'd invited the author of the collection to join us.

'Pelt' is a an alluring, creepy collection which circles around ideas of family intimacy and becoming an adult, and does so without resorting to autobiographical / confessionalist modes or nostalgic anecdote.  They are never explicit.  But often, in striking, mysterious images or in unnervingly casual asides, there are hints of violence and sexual taboo.  These are not there for shock-value or for titillation.  They are there because she wants to lead us into uncanny terrain where WE have to flesh out the details, where WE are forced to acknowledge our own dream-states and moments of psychic uncertainty.  It's a brave trick which she pulls off triumphantly.

Her poem 'Friday 12.03' is also quite beautiful...

Friday 12.03

You and I will meet
unexpectedly outside
the glass library
on Jubilee Street
and we will smile
shyly as the clock
inches forward to 04,
then we will blink
and feel it catch
in our lashes.

Around us the toddler,
the builder, the tramp
will feel it too:
these small soft beads
of white settle
on our hair, our cheeks,
and in that second
we will look up
only it won't be snow,
nor dust, nor light

but something else
entirely:  something
our mothers never
taught us, a feeling
we can neither know
nor name, a deep settling
that will frighten us
yet make us smile
at each other
all the same.



I urge you to read more.