"The Angel of Salonika," by Vesna Goldsworthy

     I'm not in the habit of reviewing older titles, but, after ordering VesnaGoldsworthy's  The Angel of Salonika (© 2011 Salt Publishing/winner of the Crashaw Prize), I'm happy to report that my decision to read, and then review this gorgeous little poetry volume was the correct one.

     Goldsworthy, a Serbian poet who grew up in communist Yugoslavia, and, later, emigrated to London, has captured and chronicled the themes of love, loss, memory, and rediscovery that originated from a summer spent in Greek Macedonia (“Salonika” is an ancient name for Thessaloniki), thirty years previous.

     Salonika, as Goldsworthy notes in her afterward, is a cultural gateway to The Balkans; this is the perfect backdrop for Goldsworthy to set up a dual travelogue; the outward landscape mirrors the poet's internal journey. The poet is often in the act of departing for other places (“Departure Board,” “Germany”) or, saying farewell to a loved one/times past (“Notebooks,” “Yugoslav Noctures”). The best poems, in my opinion, are the ones where Goldsworthy engages in the act of transformation; her own, while at the same time, acknowledges the transformations of those persons in her life who no longer fit the familiar boundaries the mind employs to solidify relationships, as in the poem, “He Stands so Thin and Waits”:

I take my spectacles off

Before the ink line of his limbs

Emerge from the crowd

Before the smile closes his eyes

Below the clock at Waterloo

Half way between

A Giacometti and a Meissen Chinaman

He stands so thin and waits

Yet I am the fragile, the much sutured one

This time, shall we...

His question bleeds

Into the departure

Of the one forty two

For fear of being early

I am the one who is late

Who takes the last few steps

Like someone who hasn't walked before

But how are you, I ask

And hold his hand for a moment

In what I hope feels like a handshake

We do not touch

Thereafter

We do not touch

© 2011 Vesna Goldsworthy

     I'm not often bowled over by a poet's use of language (in this case, English) that's not written in their native tongue. Oftentimes, poets for whom English is not their native language rely on the help of translators, or, spend a great deal of time carefully constructing poems that are burdened with layers of scholarly formalism. That can't be said of Salonika. Goldsworthy has transformed the guttural soul of English into something finer, more lovely than English has a right to be, yet, her poetry is immediate and accessible, as in the poem “Out of the Blue”:

I remember

My father's kiss

A drop of wax on my

Left shoulder

A feather

Floating away

Somewhere to the side

The light

Over the archipelago

You get too close

Even so cautiously

That is

The secret of entropy

The sky and the makeshift

Miracles

In it

All

Irreversible

© 2011 Vesna Goldsworthy

     The Angel of Salonika, as a travelogue, and as a first collection of poems written in English by Vesna Goldsworthy, deserves a permanent place on every reader's shelf.

The Angel of Salonika, © 2011 Vesna Goldsworthy, Salt Publishing, www.saltpublishing.com, ISBN 97818448788, Hardcover, 64 pages, £12.99 ($20.13 US).

article content © 2013 Marie Lecrivain

poems © 2011 Vesna Goldsworthy