Love, Mothers and Matriarchs

Donna Bryson

(Carol McKay, writer. £7)

The beauty of a pamphlet is that you can read it all the way through in one sitting, while you’re on a bus, or curled up on the couch at home, with a coffee. The beauty of this pamphlet goes way beyond all that.

Love, Mothers and Matriarchs is a themed pamphlet. The title is perfect. The poems in this sequence have the reader experience and reflect on all the heady joys love, womanhood and motherhood bring. There’s ‘Fecundity’ with its first lines ‘Any news? / Any news?’ leading on to ‘Breathless’, which opens with ‘You snuffle at my neck / fingers curling and unfurling’. Ah, the nuance of new motherhood! But that’s not all. This is a three-dimensional examination and celebration of love, motherhood and matriarchy. By extension, of partners and children, too. Donna Bryson describes in often tense and visceral lines the irritations, outrage and fears of relationships, both romantic and familial. So, ‘Drama Queen’ begins ‘He said he had helped me with the ironing. / Me and not us.’ And then there’s the anxiety expressed in ‘Waiting’ – ‘What was he wearing? What did he say? / when he left the house.’

Much of the imagery is connected with water and the sea. Coming to terms with ageing, Bryson describes in ‘Mirror, Mirror’ oestrogen as a ‘trickle compared with / the river / of former years / replaced with floods of fury’. The story arc of this themed pamphlet draws towards its final meditations with the beautifully crafted ‘Anchored in You’ and ‘Hidden’ – both moving tributes to, and recognition of, the sincerity and depth of mother love.

Whether curled up on the couch or on a bus, Love, Mothers and Matriarchs will appeal to everyone.