11:49am Monday 22nd February 2010
By Harry Mead
NO ONE can accuse the Vane Women of, er, vanity. The dozen or so members of this poetry-writing collective, named after the Vane Terrace location of their Darlington Arts Centre base, are so self-effacing they have done their best to hide their individual talents in this hardback collection, their most ambitious venture to date. Their names don’t appear with their poems, which are also not flagged up with their brief biographies.
Only by working through the contents page can each poet be linked to her poems, usually a handful scattered throughout 91 pages. Come on, girls. First rule of publishing – help the reader.
Happily, the poems themselves dispel irritation at this partial anonymity.
The Vane Women are a phenomenon – remarkably accomplished as a group and individually. One of them (I’m conforming to their light-under-a-bushel leanings) professes not to “do lerve”, yet produces a tear-jerking poem on a golden wedding.
Another contributes a poem on the Angel of the North, cleverly spelling out its name with the first letters of the lines. It concludes:
Never a secret your lip escaping
Oh, my steadfast and true lover
for life
Run away with me now, leave
the landscaping
Throw caution to the wind,
show me your mettle
Ha’way let’s go – how about
it petal?
The poems are grouped in four
themes – seduction, intimacy, desire,
loss. (Surely the wrong order, ladies?). These Vane Women can be quite steamy, but there’s humour too. Seduction by Twiglets is recommended:
Reject Chipsticks.
They lack oomph and that
Kissing surprise
You expect with
Full on
Marmite
breath
And the flip side of love is there too. One poet characterises a bickering relationship as a “scab”, manifested by “the sandpaper of the avoided eye, the carping barb…” She urges:
No more sandpaper,
I don’t want to rub along.
Let’s plane each other smooth
with softer hands.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/trade_directory/