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Forged
In a range of poetic forms, Tina Cole offers hard lives and days that saw little sun - a world that 'measured wealth in sugar for tea, bones for soup.' There is compassion, too, amid sharp-eyed detail: family portraits are presented with love - or a wise understanding. Like such poetry at its best, the personal becomes universal. The reader doesn't need an Aunt Gladys 'risking all / on G.I. promises' to recognise her. And who hasn't been intrigued, even saddened, by 'Things My Father Never Said'? Though anchored to a particular place, Forged speaks - with compelling confidence - of everywhere. - Michael W. Thomas.
Tina Cole invokes the landscape of her upbringing in poems seething with rich imagery and forceful language, each word pulling its weight. A seam of sadness runs through this body of work, as she reaches out to her parents, endeavouring to make the connections they had no tongue for. - Helen Ivory.
'Mine will be a quiet return, I will seek out ghosts, linger on wasteland puddled with grief...'
This is beautiful writing! Tina Cole writes phrases that take your breath away; she speaks of soot-smudged Black country men, but mostly of women.
'I was mothered by three women...'
These poems sing of the literal fabric of women's lives. I love the little detail, texture and colour. All this and the tricky, complicated subtleties of lives where people don't quite get one another, but where there is a great deal of love. Tina Cole is a very fine writer indeed. - Deborah Alma.
Tina Cole invokes the landscape of her upbringing in poems seething with rich imagery and forceful language, each word pulling its weight. A seam of sadness runs through this body of work, as she reaches out to her parents, endeavouring to make the connections they had no tongue for. - Helen Ivory.
'Mine will be a quiet return, I will seek out ghosts, linger on wasteland puddled with grief...'
This is beautiful writing! Tina Cole writes phrases that take your breath away; she speaks of soot-smudged Black country men, but mostly of women.
'I was mothered by three women...'
These poems sing of the literal fabric of women's lives. I love the little detail, texture and colour. All this and the tricky, complicated subtleties of lives where people don't quite get one another, but where there is a great deal of love. Tina Cole is a very fine writer indeed. - Deborah Alma.
28 pages, Paperback
Published September 3, 2021
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