Review
‘Extremely powerful and varied … Holland has both the clarity for the reader and the mastery of language to say what she means in a way that makes the brain tingle with both shock and pleasure … This collection is outstanding.’ (Angela Topping Stride Magazine )
I reached the fourth section of the book, the Boudicca sequence, and everything went electric … There’s a touch of Vicki Feaver about the violence and the cool delight in blood and innards, but the work is quite distinctive. I didn’t for one moment think about feminist directions — only the inner rage of the emotion, the amazing sweep of the imagery and the way I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled. (Helena Nelson Ambit )
Jane Holland’s Boudicca & Co is a book of adventurous, resonant inventions. As the title suggests, it offers a new view from the interior – of both country and psyche – in which history and geography are co-opted in effortless interplay. It’s a work of synthesis, and of poetic and emotional maturity, in which Holland emerges as a true craftswoman, a supple and graceful thinker with an effortless grasp of line, at the heart of the English lyric tradition. (Fiona Sampson Poetry Review )
‘… we need only compare Holland’s work with the anti-war ‘poetry’ of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is – by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the ‘Boudicca’ sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent’s Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets. (Simon Turner Gists and Piths )
I reached the fourth section of the book, the Boudicca sequence, and everything went electric … There’s a touch of Vicki Feaver about the violence and the cool delight in blood and innards, but the work is quite distinctive. I didn’t for one moment think about feminist directions — only the inner rage of the emotion, the amazing sweep of the imagery and the way I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled. (Helena Nelson Ambit )
Jane Holland’s Boudicca & Co is a book of adventurous, resonant inventions. As the title suggests, it offers a new view from the interior – of both country and psyche – in which history and geography are co-opted in effortless interplay. It’s a work of synthesis, and of poetic and emotional maturity, in which Holland emerges as a true craftswoman, a supple and graceful thinker with an effortless grasp of line, at the heart of the English lyric tradition. (Fiona Sampson Poetry Review )
‘… we need only compare Holland’s work with the anti-war ‘poetry’ of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is – by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the ‘Boudicca’ sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent’s Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets. (Simon Turner Gists and Piths )
Product Description
Jane Holland’s third collection, Camper Van Blues, is a book of journeys, both real and imaginary. The title sequence is a British road movie told through poems, one woman and her dog alone in a camper van, each jump-cut taking the reader further into the interior of an addictive, self-destructive personality. In a sequence of brief and highly visual poems, Holland explores a midnight landscape of motorways, truck stops and lay-bys, touching by turns on the issues of loneliness, drug abuse and living with depression. Taut and spare, a note of gritty humour pervades this tale of life on the road for the single woman.
The central poem in this new collection is a bold and political reworking of the Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wanderer, which is both a personal elegy and a lament for fallen soldiers by an unnamed ‘solitary drifter’. Other poems here link into that sense of loss and bereavement, and the aftermath of relationship breakdown which can lead to social isolation.
Later in the collection, Holland returns to a lighter, more lyrical note, handling poems about love, relationships and sexual attraction with confidence. There’s a return to personal mythologies too, following on from her two earlier collections, with a number of pieces based around English folklore and Celtic symbolism. Holland also explores the growing threat of climate change in several powerful ecopoems, two of which deal with the dramatic events surrounding the floods at Boscastle in 2004, where she was once a resident.
The central poem in this new collection is a bold and political reworking of the Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wanderer, which is both a personal elegy and a lament for fallen soldiers by an unnamed ‘solitary drifter’. Other poems here link into that sense of loss and bereavement, and the aftermath of relationship breakdown which can lead to social isolation.
Later in the collection, Holland returns to a lighter, more lyrical note, handling poems about love, relationships and sexual attraction with confidence. There’s a return to personal mythologies too, following on from her two earlier collections, with a number of pieces based around English folklore and Celtic symbolism. Holland also explores the growing threat of climate change in several powerful ecopoems, two of which deal with the dramatic events surrounding the floods at Boscastle in 2004, where she was once a resident.
About the Author
Jane Holland is an English poet, novelist and critic, born in Essex in 1966. She won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry in 1996. Her first collection, The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman, was published by Bloodaxe in 1997. A first novel, Kissing the Pink, followed from Sceptre in 1999. Her second collection of poetry Boudicca & Co. was published by Salt in 2006. She lives in Warwickshire with her husband and five children, where she is Warwick Poet Laureate for 2007-08.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Flood at Boscastle
Ten steps down, through Sargasso weeds
green as the felt walls
of a fish tank, is a door
through which only haruspices may pass, bearded
and with credit cards,
to buy sacred books
and strange instruments for scrying
so they might peer inside
the living heart
and say which house survives,
which doesn’t.
Portal invulnerable, they cry,
to the left-hand of the rising river,
thy charmed walls shall not be blowholes
for the unclenched well of the waters,
no spiraculum mirabile
breathing mud into the underworld.
Later, stripped to the waist, men dig
blackened books
from the whale ribs of a cottage,
then stamp up through mud
to The Cobweb
for a finger or two of whisky,
predicting more rain
on the print of a wetted thumb.
Ten steps down, through Sargasso weeds
green as the felt walls
of a fish tank, is a door
through which only haruspices may pass, bearded
and with credit cards,
to buy sacred books
and strange instruments for scrying
so they might peer inside
the living heart
and say which house survives,
which doesn’t.
Portal invulnerable, they cry,
to the left-hand of the rising river,
thy charmed walls shall not be blowholes
for the unclenched well of the waters,
no spiraculum mirabile
breathing mud into the underworld.
Later, stripped to the waist, men dig
blackened books
from the whale ribs of a cottage,
then stamp up through mud
to The Cobweb
for a finger or two of whisky,
predicting more rain
on the print of a wetted thumb.
