PART OF THE DARK by Scott Elder
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Scott Elder lives in Auvergne, France. Since 2014 his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the UK and abroad in magazines including The New Welsh Review, The Moth, Orbis, Cake, Poetry Salzburg, Cyphers, Southword , and Nimrod. His debut pamphlet, Breaking Away, was published by Poetry Salzburg (2015) and first collection, ‘Part of the Dark’, by Dempsey&Windle 2017 (UK). He was runner-up in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize 2016, among the winners of the Guernsey International Poetry Prize 2018, highly commended in the Bristol Poetry Prize 2018, the Poetry on the Lake Prize 2018, Buzzwords Poetry Competition 2018, and shortlisted in both the Fish Poetry Prize 2017 and the Plough Prize 2017.
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Sheenagh Pugh, reviewing 'Part of the Dark', writes:
You will be disappointed if you want poems to be like crossword clues that can be solved and filled in; there are plenty of enigmas and ambiguities here, and I suspect some are too personal to be easily decoded. Think of them as word-pictures and you will be closer to the mark. I don't know how many are actually ekphrastic poems, but several sound as if they could be, and gain their power by etching an image on the mind. Mandy Pannett comments on 'Part of the Dark':
How, as in the opening poem, can we see a portrait at midnight? Who is the enigmatic 'lady' glimpsed and hinted at throughout? These are poems of mystery and question, paradox and ambiguity....We are on a journey with this fine collection. Savour the quest. 10:37 AM
From 'Part of the Dark' (2017) A middle-range ballistic missile was intercepted and destroyed while you washed your cup and glimpsed a wren through the kitchen window. It was busy with twigs and knew exactly what to do. On the table a bowl of fruit: bananas, apples, kiwis-- strangers awaiting your knife and tongue. At 10:42 you opened the door and sniffed the air as might a cat before returning to its piece of meat. You sensed that something was wrong. © Scott Elder |
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