Title: She Who Sleeps With Bones
Author: Tanya Shirley
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press
Reviewer: Paul H. Williams

Some poets write about the landscape, some about religious, social and political issues; others dwell on the metaphysics, the human spirit, mankind and its idiosyncrasies. However, Tanya Shirley, in her first collection of poems, has delved into the personal, as many before her have done. So, if you are into the notion of embracing other people's personal thoughts and feelings, this is the perfect book for you.

She Who Sleeps With Bones, the title poem, is about Shirley becoming a medium just like her mother, albeit nonchalantly, and who is now communicating with the dead through her dreams. "Already, I know too much/It will kill me to give this up/Dead people breathe down my neck/Their bones creak when I roll over in my sleep."

But it is in 'Inheritance' that her cynicism and subsequent surrender are more poignant. "And poor me - after laughing for years with my sister/at our mother's far-fetched visions - I have come to know/that the people I love will always be slaughtered in my dreams."

This 77-page collection is loaded with a variety of themes, ranging from death, impending doom, fear, infidelity, religious hypocrisy, melancholia, to clairvoyance. Shirley writes; "My mother could see from the back/of her head, the enemy approaching/She deciphered the codes of dreams and scared children with her prophecies of parents drowning."

Determined to delay her grandfather's death, she says in 'Grandpa in the departure lounge', "You said dead people/are calling you/read their names out loud ... eyes closed/lips limp/rocking - you are ready/I am not prepared/wear red to bed/sprinkle this oil under your pillow/walk with salt/tell them to go to hell."

Divine intervention

For her grandma, Luna, she asks for divine intervention in "Where is God in all of this?": "When you know cancer/does not belong/in the cavern of a woman/who reared roses/and brought a mango tree/all the way from Jamaica/for the neighbours/who couldn't afford to travel." Still, "We go outside to cry/Staying close to the entrance/in case we are summoned/for your final breath/We make fun of/your youngest son/because he has not stopped crying/since we got the news."

Perhaps If I Loved you more ... also betrays her vulnerable side as "We cannot sit outside your gate anymore/Not even your palm spread/like sheltering branches over my breasts/can temper the molten fear rising up my spine/they have conquered the night."

Tinge of humour

'Sunday Ritual' wreaks melancholy with a tinge of humour: "Sundays were always hard on my heart, easy on my pen/I was never a poet then, just a girl/longing to be home ... To be home again/I would give the old people all my teeth/hand-wrap them and deliver them at the altar/like a mash-mouth virgin."

The biggest laugh, though, comes from 'Insomnia, Imperia-lism and a few good mongrels', based on a true newspaper story. "Now he suffers the noise of the dogs/that do not keep quiet over here/Dogs whose tongues are not strangers in their mouths/dogs who do not fear the accents of their bark/Here, Mr Ambassador, when you lie with one of us/even the dogs will call you out." Mr Ambassador, are you still there?

Liberation jumps from the pages, more so from 'Immaculate': "There was one particular day I was wearing my uniform... and it rained. I walked slowly in the rain - exactly what we were told not to do... but this particular day I walked the way I thought a lady would. She would wear the rain ... I floated outside my clothes, outside whiteness, goodness, crosses, confessions. I prayed for rain and expulsion."

The sexual was not outdone. In fact 'she' made her presence felt, as there are erotic moments right throughout, and without giving quotations, how much more personal can Shirley get than she is in 'Journey', 'Myth and desire', 'Out of body', and a few others? The three-section paperback is a potpourri of intimate thoughts and reflections, which are certainly no longer private.

They are served to the public in an attractively packaged book. The mystical-looking woman in the artwork on the cover, which I assume is Shirley, seems to be in dreamland, with a long, phallic object flowing from her mouth. Am I reading too much into the imagery? She who sleeps with bones?