The Heel of Bernadette: Poems Book

Colette Bryce's debut poetry collection brings to mind Borges' essay on the Argentinian writer, in which Borges suggests that writers steeped in their own culture do not resort to local colour because it is taken for granted. It is therefore not surprising that Bryce, born in Derry in 1970, one year after Bloody Sunday should not dwell on what was always there.Only a handful of poems mention the Troubles explicitly. In "Line", she traces the line that forms the Saturday limits given by her mother and the line that divides the city, "ravelling under the traffic / up, you're the guttering scaling McCafferty's, / maze through the slating, / dive from sight and down into history, Line..." The transition from individual to universal takes you completely off-guard. In "Break", Bryce uses child-like simplicity again when a young girl befriends a "soldier boy", who asks her to buy him some cigarettes. "Look at my Miraculous Medal. / Let me punch your bullet-proof vest. Go on try." With fairytale ease, the girl doesn't realise what's behind the eye of the gun. While some of this collection seems a little premature and the poems are not well ordered, poems like "Itch" are impressive. "I believe that Jesus lives / deep in the ditch of my mother's ear." The daughter thinks that her mother cannot hear her because of the whispering sound of Jesus's breath. In "Footings" and "Father, in the face", the voice is more even and resolved and "the leap approach to life" suggests both the poet's inexperience and her eager enthusiasm, characterising a notable debut. --Cherry SmythRead More