Poetry review: Poets for Haiti

Published on Monday 1 March 2010 18:03

POETS FOR HAITI **** QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH

POET Laureate Carol Ann Duffy ended Scotland's biggest ever poetry reading on Sunday night with a poem, Premonition, in which time's river switched course, so perhaps that is how this review should run too: backwards from the concluding standing ovation.

Re-visions, re-versals: it wasn't just Duffy's concluding poem, bringing her mother back to life – from the room in the hospital, to a house where wheelchairs, commodes and medical appointment cards vanished, to a sunlit garden "where the blackbird eases the worm back into the earth" – that made this the theme of the night.

So back again then: to John Glenday imagining Beauty and the Beast playing backwards and a wonderful love poem drawing on the fact that the tin-opener was invented half a century before tinned food. Back to Don Paterson explaining the purpose of poetry to his young son with awesome simplicity – and yes, he's in time-stilling mode too, re-examining their day to find "one thing that makes a mirror in my eyes/then I paint it with a tear to make it bright./That is why I sit up through the night."

Back again. To Jackie Kay leaving an audience shaking with laughter then stilled by elegy. Sean O'Brien, Vicki Feaver, Andrew Greig all stopping time's arrow with weighted, targeted poems of loss and perseverance. All the way back, past 19 poets, past Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop talking about hurt, healing and Haiti, to an audience coming into a hall with a sense of expectation. Expectations that, when time switched back to the normal direction, would turn out to be met in full.