Jane Thomas’s poetic meditation on dementia is erudite, lexically impressive, and finally on the shelves of your favourite bookshop.
Accolades for a previous incarnation of this collection are multiple: shortlisted for the Rialto pamphlet competition in 2020 and a Northern writers’ poetry debut prize winner in 2023 – the only surprise is that it hasn’t made it to print sooner. But in the capricious world of poetry, we get what get when we get it, and happily, Coracle will now find its readers thanks to Live Canon. Lucky them and lucky us.
The subject matter is close to Thomas’s own heart but will be familiar to many. She writes of her father’s journey with dementia in ways that are both deeply moving and impressively inventive, as the titular ‘bulrush boat-for-one’ carries the father she knows ever further away from her. In poems like ‘Seven Ways of Looking at Dementia’, ‘Memory Clinic Haikus’ and throughout the collection we are presented with multiple viewpoints of a disease which is complex, perplexing and unpredictable, but at times also life-affirming, even humorous.
Thomas deploys an array of different vocabularies: of the disease, the family’s Welsh roots, her father’s work in British intelligence, even Shakespeare, as well as using form and fragmentation sparingly and to striking effect. It makes for a collection that is always surprising, never banal, in which the clever and original and meet the stark and simple with extra force. If the final lines of ‘Your Front Door’ don’t floor you, I’m afraid you may be missing a vital piece of humanity.
With all this said, Coracle is clearly not a passive read. Thomas invites us to peer through the darkening window with her, to engage our minds to actively participate in a work of art that honours her father and celebrates their relationship, whilst successfully negotiating the fine line between such an endeavour and sentimentality.
The net result is a true gift – not just one but a multitude of fresh perspectives on dementia and the suffering it causes, shot through with the beauty of Thomas’s vast vocabulary and even vaster love. A must-read.
Katie Jenkins
