Juniper Street
by Vona Groarke
Category: English poetry

In this, her fourth collection, Vona Groarke asks what it means to come from a place, how we are ever to feel at home elsewhere, and what it is we take with us when we uproot. These elegant, engaging and witty poems at once retrieve the past s ache, welcome the future s freedoms, and question what lies between. The violence of history leaves its mark. To Smithereens , for example, refracts the murder of Lord Mountbatten through personal recollection, while the title poem, in which a mother watches her children boarding a yellow school bus, strikes a contrasting graceful note. Juniper Street confronts disappointment and compromise, yet remains open to the possibilities of delight and hope. It brings her already celebrated gifts to a rich and shimmering maturity.