Two Rivers
Poetry by Simon Millward – Mudlark Press, £12, pb, pp 68
Cover painting by Ruth Bateman
To purchase e-mail s.d.millward@googlemail.com
Two Rivers is a new book of poems by Simon Millward – a long time Buddhist meditator based in North Devon. Simon Millward is a predominantly a poet of nature, pure and simple, in the best sense. He resists the siren calls of ‘pressing issues’, and writes with strong, direct feeling – for the elemental presences in our world, and also the poignancies of human relationships.
This poet is very fortunate in living in the beautiful green hills of North Devon. His house stands close to a place where two rushing rivers meet – hence the title – and this collection, the fruit of many years of experience and reflection – is rich with the changing sounds and moods of the rivers at various times of year. Here in winter floods for example:
no evensong of hope
from a thrush in
the gloom
all sounds are the river muddied
in spate
gurgling and
sucking round
every small obstruction
but don't look back
the dead are spoken for
or lying fallow
between waters across the sodden fields
(from 'Before Candlemass')
Whilst sounds, of waters, of birds, of the winds, are richly present, in another sense these are poems that arise from silence, from solitude and contemplation, of the natural world and also of the strangeness and uniqueness of ties to friends and family. There are poems here from the wilds of Devon and Cornwall, poems to fellow artists and poems concerned with close family members.
For me (as they bring back memories of wonderful writing retreats) some of the most poignant are those from Loch Voil in Scotland, where we find:
water darker than the cloud it mirrors a nest scooped out like two cupped hands half-submerged the rowing boat rocks mist disperses over the crest of pines (from 'At the edge of the loch')
There are many such moments in this collection of quiet contemplation, rich with woven details of the natural world.
Urthona – Buddhism & art 