When The Sun Turns Green by Jane McKie

Jane McKie’s collection is largely about nature, and the poems here certainly seem charged with meaning. But in many of these poems McKie seems to be more intuitive than instructive – they certainly hold all kinds of hidden depths, but the reader is kept distant from these, and it’s hard to engage. The feeling of inaccessibility isn’t helped by some odd word choices – words like ‘gnomic’ or ‘tranche’, ‘effluvium’ or ‘deliquesces’ appear regularly, almost familiar but used in odd constructions that dilute their significance. There’s actually a glossary at the back of the book explaining some of the most obscure terms, and it’s a great help when it's available. Vagueness is another problem – a poem called Sleight ends “pocketed / without anyone noticing, / least of all me.” which is less intriguing than it is bewildering. This is not to say the whole collection is like this – there is an early poem, Grandmother Ikons which describes types of grandmother, possibly all parts of the same person, and a descriptive poem, Sheep’s Skull and Weir, which are accessible works with enduring interest. But as a whole, this collection seems too personal to relate to. [Jane Emmett]