© 2009 Bridge Foundation Inc

This is a small book of reflective verse, suited to those who search for meaning in a world where our cultural origins have been obscured in a variety of ways. The five sections of the text: Post, Present, Prose, Places, Ports, obviously resonate as indi­vidual stories with the writer, but not always with the reader. The book is rather a description of re­lentless wanderings including those of the poet himself, gypsies, Pitcairn Islanders and other refu­gees looking for the meaning of life.

To begin and end the journey Smith provides us with a broad outline of the life of an ex-prisoner, without enough details to provide vicarious thrills or revulsion. The picture of someone:

‘Sentenced now, who saw so little beauty, his time already served even from before..’ Low Tide

Using a listing technique in several early poems Smith sketches a life of deprivation and petty criminality, rounded out with vignettes of working life:

‘I remember scraping trodden pastry

rat shit, from the floor on my hands and knees.’

Bad Old Days

Smith does not absolve the persona his crime, but he does allow him to state his predicament intelligently within its social context.  Prison assaults are summed up in one line: `This is grotesque', The Prison Surveys, reminding us of Mark O'Flynn's poetic reactions to teaching in a prison.

The prison experience frames a search by Smith for his origins, taking him from the unanswered questions at home, to American highways, to small English villages and to Holland where:

‘You've got to face things in the end.

The boy's gone, the dyke's gone, she's gone.’ Quest

This fruitless search produced some of Smith's most evocative work. In the English countryside he pro­duced prose poems with an outstanding atmospheric quality, including the maniacal fears of I can't write this on a postcard and the empti­ness howling through Terminus. In B & B Landlady, Smith presents one of his few identifiable perso­nae, marvelling at her wandering life and empathizing with her memories. In the same way he empathizes with the persona of Nana, under­standing that it is his role to uncover the secrets she is withholding. The poetry here is a trifle cliché, but it suits the images of old ladies dreaming at the end of their lives.

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