A compelling collection of poems that are evocative, poignant and insightful.Sharply-focused scenes from Japan and Spain are set against memories of an English childhood.Eloquently written in an engaging style that will appeal to a wide range of readers.
The dynamo that powers these poems is memory. Scenes from Japan and Spain are finely detailed with a fresh perspective. The lemons in "Lemons on the Lemon Tree" are 'not the lemons money can buy', not pristine, but coarse and wild like 'rough outlaws', while the sun in "Summer in Mallorca" is not one seen in a holiday brochure but 'sheers off dimensions/and desiccates the orange trees' leaves'. In Japan, cherry blossom viewing turns into a saké drinking party with 'white petals/red faces' under trees that like 'can-can dancers/reveal their blossom's lace', and in a tranquil garden we lose our senses 'in the carp's stealth/circling upon itself/within its absences'.
The same keen eye is turned on memories from the distant past, from a family day by the sea becoming a battle against the elements "the wade out and the brave/breath, then the plunge into steely cold' in "Goring-by-Sea", to the football team photograph in the "The First Eleven" with the goalie 'who let in/more goals than we ever got close to scoring' proudly clutching the ball. A memory of cycling home from school on a winter evening, pedalling hard to turn the bike's dynamo, becomes in the title poem of Dynamo Memory a metaphor for capturing elusive memories in words: 'If I pause the light glimmers down./The harder I push the more the lamp shines.'

Paul Archer is a poet and translator of Japanese and Spanish poetry. He graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in English Language and Literature and has lived in London, Tokyo and Mallorca.