What Possessed Me

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Cyfrol o gerddi sy'n atalw atgofion plentyndod a pherthnasau eraill gyda hiwmor, dwyster, ac eglurder hynod, gan archwilio hefyd fyd natur a thirweddau gwahanol ardaloedd yn Lloegr, Cymru, Ffrainc a Gwlad Groeg. Cynhwysir teyrngedau i Edward Thomas, Dannie Abse a Jack Gilbert, llenorion a ddylanwadodd ar y bardd.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

Evoking childhood memories and lifelong relationships with humour, poignancy, and preternatural clarity, What Possessed Me also explores the natural world and landscapes in various parts of England, Wales, France, and Greece. There are salutes to writers like Edward Thomas, Dannie Abse and Jack Gilbert who, we are told, 'put his life into poetry.'

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Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

What Possessed Me , winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award in the Wales Book of the Year competition for 2017, is the latest of John Freeman’s many collections of poems. Geographically wide-ranging, it is very focused on his personal memories and responses and on how a poet seeks to hold these in the printed word as a charm against time and change. His style is deceptively relaxed, even casual, sometimes close to a diary entry or a conversation. Memories of experiences, both distant and recent are captured with great charm, poignancy and sharpness, to illustrate the fact that ‘we live in so much more than just the present’. The first section, mainly concerned with memories of his parents and childhood, is touching, insightful, sometimes humorous. The poems give a very clear picture of the people and their relationships. In the celebrated poem ‘My Grandfather’s Hat’, Freeman gives us the child’s view of his grandfather as majestic while the adult is aware of the fragility of old age. The whole is infused with such affection embracing the entire family at that moment. In Part 2, the poem ‘Sunset on the River’ is concerned with the transposition from reality to art. Freeman captures an image of himself taking a photograph of a scene, then analyses the differences (both losses and gains) between that and the real experience. The style is casual yet the poem is so perceptive about memory, reality and creation. In this section the poet gathers many moments in landscapes with swallows, seagulls, blackbirds and robins: a company of living things ‘alive and conscious’ in this world together, and perhaps as puzzled and delighted by it as we are. Although ‘What Possessed Me’ is a poem about a quixotic and exhausting cycle ride, it is the title of the collection because in it Freeman both shows us the subjects he wanted to capture and considers the nature of ‘possession’ – the moment of inspiration. In ‘The Pond in the Fields’, it is a confluence of his own experience of the place and what he has learned from Edward Thomas, who sharpened the vision of his readers. Freeman not only acknowledges the influence of Thomas but writes to or for other poets and friends. Of Danny Abse he says ‘ How full / of him his printed words are now he’s stilled.’ Freeman achieves that continuance of the personal experience in all its subtlety and intensity held in the printed words – but it is a quest very much still in progress. In ‘Casting the Poem’ he compares making a poem to casting a horoscope: ‘A reflection of the universe at that / precise moment in relation to you’. I have rarely seen a better description of the experience, and that is what John Freeman achieves in this collection.