Gather

This clear-eyed collection by Malene Engelund starts as it means to continue, literally and figuratively, with the strength and fragility of glass, keeping heat in and keeping cold at bay. This balancing act continues throughout the book, and it is no mean feat to write as though with a blade on ice, and yet convey such warmth. More impressive still: there's playfulness here, not just formally or in the sing-song circularity of motifs, but in Engelund's affection for language. She has had fun writing these poems, whatever the heaviness of the subject matter; she's got down into the weeds of words, she's got her hands dirty. What she has come back up with is a visceral collection of poems, yes, poems that look you square in the eye, yes, but they are open and generous and remarkably fair, and they reward a return. It's a unique book, and that is a very rare thing to be able to say
Malene Engelund's poems are bright with elemental beauty - each layered line reaching towards light, 'a blue opening'. These are poems that gather and bear truths and griefs, alive to the quickening of love, loss and resilience, through innovative formal play. Drawing on visual art, music and familial and erotic love, each poem is 'aflame' in a burning world. Colour, most notably blue, becomes both metaphor and reality, a lens through which love, in all its guises, is drawn onto the page and into the ear, felt deep in each blue vein. These poems are both sensitive and rich, deeply attuned to the more-than-human world, exploring vulnerability and connection. To read this collection is to enter into new relationship with a charged world in which love 'breaks and finds a new form', each poem radiant with the desire 'to gather as much colour as possible'
Malene Engelund's collection opens in the aftermath of an emotional storm, a family unit in tatters, but in the poems that follow a mother gathers different threads together to weave a future for herself and her sons. I loved the recurring motifs that revealed themselves as I spent more time with the poems, like turning over a tapestry from the reverse and seeing its pattern fully; windows and glass, frost and fire, water and ice, a knife blade and golden coins. Lessons are learned from a deep engagement with art and wisdom is foraged from the natural world. But as the narrator teaches her children, they in turn impart knowledge to her. 'I only trusted blue' - poems engaging with the colour blue bring a bright stitch of precise and sensuous language as desire and hope return