Deep Colour
, by acclaimed poet Diana Bridge, is a fiercely sensory and meticulously crafted collection. These poems respond with graceful precision to the immediate physical world, and meditate on time, beauty and the nature of being. Whether remembering a friend, describing a child’s first steps, or observing her surroundings – a tree, a painting, the flashing fin of a goldfish, a simple everyday object like a lamp or a bowl – Bridge is finely attuned to the here-and-now. ‘While it lived,’ she writes, ‘it was intensity itself.’ These prismatic poems, which include some exquisite translations of poems by the fifth-century Chinese poet Xie Tiao, are fully immersed in the world, vividly alive to the dance of light and shadow, movement and stillness, sound and silence. Few poets see so clearly or write so luminously. Bridge’s poems return us to the daily round with our senses heightened, our minds alert and our hearts made tender. Deep colour, the words for it are out of range – That much I can tell you. What I cannot say is how a life gathers its themes – From