Palmistry by Christopher Ringrose – a review by R J Dent
Palmistry is the art of characterization and the foretelling of the future through the study of the palm of the hand. Christopher Ringrose’s 51-page volume of elegant poems named after this esoteric art is, like most enduring poetry, more concerned with the present and the past than it is with the future.
In Palmistry, Ringrose not only shows us his anthropological academic background, as is evident in his poems preoccupied with his personal mythology such as ‘To Jill’, ‘I Wanted You’ and ‘A Winter Sunday with the Children Aged Three and Five’, but also his gentler lyricism, as in ‘Modern Magi’.
The collection also highlights his matter-of-fact, farmer-like bluntness, as in Ullswater in February’ and ‘A Farm in East Yorkshire, 1955’ and ‘The September Hare’. The hare is a creature which is ‘Startled into leggy motion’ because ‘It knew we were coming/for some time’. Ringrose describes how the hare ‘waited for the right moment… then pushed those long brown limbs… and took off’. The poem is saturated with a palpable sense of the hare’s fear of man.
Sometimes a macabre and critical spirit haunts this collection of poems which has been written by an Englishman who now lives in Australia. Australia has been a great source of inspiration for the poet: “I found it quite creative coming here,” he says. “Everything’s new.” The last point is particularly pertinent because Ringrose effortlessly adopts Australian English as the voice for some of the poems in Palmistry. One such poem is ‘Terra Nullius’:
They’re wiping Bondi clean.
The tractor hauls its silver rollers
up and down at dawn
from Icebergs to the rocks
flipping cartons, cups and single
thongs into its orange box.
A daily scrub…
In ‘Terra Nullius’, the local, the specific and the particular all serve as metaphors for national and international historical, racial, political and cultural issues. To his credit, Ringrose handles these incendiary themes and this controversial subject delicately and carefully in a poem that is deceptively simple and unadorned.
Palmistry is Chris Ringrose’s first published poetry collection and beneath an appreciation of life’s variety and restless beauty there is a keen awareness of the inevitability of decay and disintegration – and the fear that accompanies them. Although it is never imitative, sometimes Ringrose’s poetic voice sounds like an amalgamation of Robert Frost, Les Murray and Ted Hughes. Several of the poems in Palmistry are bleak, intense, but still beautiful.
The publisher’s blurb for Palmistry reads:
Christopher Ringrose’s elegant and sophisticated verse explores mysteries, joys, experiences as they unfurl over decades. These are gentle, explorative, contemplative, but always surprising poems which repay reading and re-reading. Palmistry is the record of life which no one ever predicts.
Product details:
Title: Palmistry
Author: Christopher Ringrose
Publisher: In Case of Emergency Press
Pages: 51
Publication Date: February 2019
Formats: Paperback and ebook (Kindle)
Language: English
Available from:
Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07PCKWN9F
Purchase link (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PCKWN9F
Purchase link (Aus): https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07PCKWN9F
And for more of Chris Ringrose’s poetry, go to: www.cringrose.com
Palmistry by Christopher Ringrose
A review by R J Dent
R J Dent 