Lavinia

Blue FieldA flood as the day releasesand the whole snow worldis neither wet nor deep, but primary.Colour so inherent, it does not fallbut rises from my skin,the snow, the trees, the road.This blue isn’t built or grown.It has no tissue, nothingto touch or taste or bring to minda memory, no iris or artery,no gentian, aconite or anemone,no slate, plum, oil-spill or gun,no titanium or turquoise,no mercury or magnesium,no phosphorous, sapphire or silver foil,no duck egg or milk jug,no chambray, denim or navy,no indigo, octopus…

“Exploded essays”, the poet, novelist and memoirist Lavinia Greenlaw calls the 17 pieces of almost-art-critical prose in this bright, mournful book. The phrase suggests a bristling diagram or enlarged view, an annotated arc of thought or feeling. But also something violently botched or ruined – don’t all essays worth the name aspire, more or less secretly, to blowing up their own form? In revisiting a lifetime of looking – at art, landscapes, weather, heavenly bodies, human faces and sometimes nothing at all – Greenlaw…