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Kith
Love, sex, boats and friendship. And yet Jo Bell’s second poetry collection, Kith, is about so much more, as these bold and generous poems interweave bigger questions of place, identity and community and what these mean to us, here and now.
Delighting in the belting, beautiful turn-of-phrase, Jo Bell’s poems are lyrical and joyous, but always precise and clear as birdsong. They take us the long way home, plot histories along the route of backwaters, and are occasionally diverted for a roll in the hay; hearts are broken and boats are dry-docked. There will be tears, but there will also be love, safe harbours, and the company of wise and faithful kith.
Delighting in the belting, beautiful turn-of-phrase, Jo Bell’s poems are lyrical and joyous, but always precise and clear as birdsong. They take us the long way home, plot histories along the route of backwaters, and are occasionally diverted for a roll in the hay; hearts are broken and boats are dry-docked. There will be tears, but there will also be love, safe harbours, and the company of wise and faithful kith.
- GenresPoetry
74 pages, Paperback
First published April 17, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 12, 2016
This is another of my catching up reviews as I've been reading and re-reading Jo Bell's Kith since it was published last year. She is one of the rising stars of the UK poetry world and is an excellent poet. During 2014 she organised and facilitated the 52 Project with weekly prompts to enthuse and inspire people to write poems.
Kith is her second collection (I have yet to read her first) and it is marvellous. The opening poem, Crates Crates gives you a good feel for her deft touch, humour and the way in which she makes you look more closely at ordinary things
Crates
Observe that when I speak of crates
your mind provides one straight away.
Likely you are thinking of the fruiterer’s crate:
a shallow slatted box of rain-matted pine,
the archetype of apples stencilled on the side,
a cartouche slot above it for a grocer’s hand.
There is such warmth in these poems, especially when you hear her read them.
Many of them are about life on the water, Bell was the Uk's first canal laureate and they vividly evoke what it is like being on a narrowboat, chugging slowly along the back waters ofEngland's canals.
It was difficult to chose a favourite poem as all the poems in the book are contenders but I think I'll go for Lifted about the passage of a boat through a lock.
Kith is her second collection (I have yet to read her first) and it is marvellous. The opening poem, Crates Crates gives you a good feel for her deft touch, humour and the way in which she makes you look more closely at ordinary things
Crates
Observe that when I speak of crates
your mind provides one straight away.
Likely you are thinking of the fruiterer’s crate:
a shallow slatted box of rain-matted pine,
the archetype of apples stencilled on the side,
a cartouche slot above it for a grocer’s hand.
There is such warmth in these poems, especially when you hear her read them.
Many of them are about life on the water, Bell was the Uk's first canal laureate and they vividly evoke what it is like being on a narrowboat, chugging slowly along the back waters ofEngland's canals.
It was difficult to chose a favourite poem as all the poems in the book are contenders but I think I'll go for Lifted about the passage of a boat through a lock.
October 25, 2015
In Kith, Jo Bell is at her lyrical and narrative best when she weaves domestic themes with her unblushing sensuality. Because of the straight-forward themes and their lush surface textures, a reader may be inclined to overlook the assured, expert craftsmanship of the poems. However, any studied examination will reveal each line, stanza and form is carefully wrought with a deft sense for pacing and dramatic flow, and therefore one experiences much pleasure in the reading. On the page, Bell's voice is pleasant. earthy and rational, ironically coquettish when the situation demands, but satisfyingly adult in all respects. Poems like "Shibboleth," "Mowing," "Beginnings," "Talking to myself," and the incomparable sonnet, "Taken," as well as the sequence of canal poems, display a poet of considerable emotional range and technical accomplishment. Her poem, "Whales," was runner-up in the 2014 Wigtown Poetry Competition, and is certainly one of my favorites from Kith:
At the bathroom door we bump into each other slowly
and take rest. It’s two o’clock. The skylight makes us dim.
Your great frame drifts to mine. A noise of pleasure.
Naked, out of bed and both surprised to find ourselves
standing at all, we lean together. These are clearer waters
than the day can offer us. I touch my hardship, mute
against the only shape that helps. Your face, sleep-gentle
takes its ease in breathing deeply, rests on my warm hair.
Each body wants the other’s foil and form, the shelter,
anything. You take my hand and toddle us to bed. . . .
The languor sloughing off these lines is palpable as it is enviable. The denouement in the last line, "In the night, we wake up singing," completes the metaphor in the most satisfying of ways. Kith is a wonderful book and I hope it is followed by more that explore Bell's singular voice.
At the bathroom door we bump into each other slowly
and take rest. It’s two o’clock. The skylight makes us dim.
Your great frame drifts to mine. A noise of pleasure.
Naked, out of bed and both surprised to find ourselves
standing at all, we lean together. These are clearer waters
than the day can offer us. I touch my hardship, mute
against the only shape that helps. Your face, sleep-gentle
takes its ease in breathing deeply, rests on my warm hair.
Each body wants the other’s foil and form, the shelter,
anything. You take my hand and toddle us to bed. . . .
The languor sloughing off these lines is palpable as it is enviable. The denouement in the last line, "In the night, we wake up singing," completes the metaphor in the most satisfying of ways. Kith is a wonderful book and I hope it is followed by more that explore Bell's singular voice.
March 10, 2017
What a lovely collection of poems. Jo Bell has an amazing knack of making strong non-verbal experiences part of the reader's experience through the medium of words--very clever! Kith shares the natural environment, the way individuals interact (very direct but so truthful and so recognisable). And I loved reading so many of these poems-amazing opening lines: Kingfisher, "The shot that starts the half-willing heart . . .": Eve naming the birds--"I give him language and he looks for flint."-- and endings: My Schiehallion, "Their names and mine will pass like rain/but I am buried in them, they in me:/their soil will cling to me a little when I fall."; Whales; and too many to list and quote from for opening and closing lines and all that goes between.
April 29, 2020
A really charming collection from Jo Bell, published by the brilliant Nine Arches Press - a leader in great poetry.
What I loved particularly was Bell's witty and mischievous style; there is melancholy, but also humour in her poems based in and around her boating fantasies. She catches you off guard with poetic strut:
You don't fool me. You water-Cockney mallards
with your nightclub swagger; I've seen you
fucking in the shallows, shouting like a bus stop drunk.
Bell is deft, accomplished, agile, and at times provokes real, mortal emotion. Her field specific references are sometimes hard to follow for someone unused to the boating world, but there is an exciting newness about her approach. Well worth a read for a poetry aficionado.
What I loved particularly was Bell's witty and mischievous style; there is melancholy, but also humour in her poems based in and around her boating fantasies. She catches you off guard with poetic strut:
You don't fool me. You water-Cockney mallards
with your nightclub swagger; I've seen you
fucking in the shallows, shouting like a bus stop drunk.
Bell is deft, accomplished, agile, and at times provokes real, mortal emotion. Her field specific references are sometimes hard to follow for someone unused to the boating world, but there is an exciting newness about her approach. Well worth a read for a poetry aficionado.
April 23, 2018
Indelible

Never a dull moment, the flavour of these poems, their rich and indelible narratives and commentaries on life, love, sex and, water will leave you smacking your chops and quivering. Absolutely delectable. Bell reaches parts other poets simply cannot.

Never a dull moment, the flavour of these poems, their rich and indelible narratives and commentaries on life, love, sex and, water will leave you smacking your chops and quivering. Absolutely delectable. Bell reaches parts other poets simply cannot.
December 25, 2024
Worth re-reading. Excellent use of language: words, rhythms, syntax, line division. A good level of compassion. Possibly some ideas about 'kith' and belonging are less challenged than I would like, but I admire the way contemporary language which is easy to understand carries some ideas.
May 12, 2018
Made me want to hop aboard a houseboat and take to the water. An atmospheric and powerful collection.
November 13, 2016
Bell has a very distinctive voice: her poem's directness and pithiness are very much her own, and she does not sound like any other modern poet. Her strongest poems are wonderful: I think she particularly comes into her own when describing nature, archaeology and the water-ways with which she, living on a canal-boat, knows so well. Her poems about relationships were less successful: I felt they lacked real insight, and worked only because her word-choices remain original. I am impressed by this collection, though, and would read more by her.
April 26, 2019
Sorry to see this going back to the library. Love the canal boats and archeology. I have a cousin lives on a narrowboat so I can feel a connection. However I think that in the absence of this connection I would have found some other one as reading the book brings her voice close.
December 27, 2016
Beautiful meditation and all the mirrors that make us who we are and we call friends or companions.
April 19, 2021
Very fresh and enjoyable, thoughtful and playful
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews