The thin bridge
by Andy Jackson
Whitmore Press, 2014
‘Poetry from a body shaped like a question mark’ That is the tag line for Andy Jackson’s blog, and it perfectly sums up the to and fro in his work. Jackson, who has Marfan’s Syndrome, has said that he came to write poetry partly ‘ to control the way people see me. I’d lived with the staring and comments that having an unusual body brings, and I wanted to be in charge.’
In a recent blog post he deals with this issue; the paradox of having ‘an unusual shape, but no pain’, and the confusion this causes for the ‘concerned stranger’. This new collection, which won the 2013 Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize, condenses these concerns with the confidence it takes to let them be understated, if ever present. The relation of bodies to themselves, and to the world, is rehearsed over and over again, tentatively, ironically, quizzically.
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