China Suite

GILLIAN BICKLEY'S fourth collection of poems in which she responds to people, art and life, creating a record of her particular space in time. Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Sukhothai, Honolulu, Mexico City, northernmost Scotland, Andorra are among the places. Intimates and strangers are the people. She is interested as much in a mother and son seen for some seconds on a bridge in Shanghai as in the emotions flowing between performer and conductor throughout a concert, and the interpretation one creative artist gives to that of another's work. She values the records we all make: - the heritage we may or may not preserve, what we choose to reveal of our lives, the constant interpretative understanding of the personal as well as the historical past, and the sacredness of memory. Here we find observation and reflection - on current affairs as well as people and places - and also the frisson produced by five 'skulls' in a window, a funeral owl caught in hire-car headlights, and the realization that classical stories are re-enacted in our own lives