Fourth Child

by Megan Hall

Megan Hall's first collection of poems, Fourth Child, has the texture of a carefully wrought, hand-stitched garment. It is something you want to bury your face in, like the familiar scented fabric of an item of clothing that belonged to a beloved who is gone. The Poems combine a dark humour and terrible grief with a lightness and restrained sensuality. Her language has the qualities of dance: uninhibited and polished, accomplished and vivid. Fourth Child shows a poet courageously facing deep feelings while being committed to accurate writing, making beautiful and living things out of the fabric of loss, grief, and emptiness.

Genres: Poetry

56 pages, Softback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this collection relates to a running theme in Hall's poetry - she is her grandmother's "fourth child". As a newborn, only 49 days old, her mother gives her up. The collection is short and poignant with heavy themes of suicide and grief, but also with some lighter themes relating to love.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The oven element glowing”

(A layman’s review of Fourth Child by Megan Hall.)

Dear Megan,

“Orange geraniums / the oven element glowing / the long scar under your wrist” – that’s what love is to you. It epitomises the poignantly mundane kitchen cupboard full of imagery and ingredients with which you concoct your delightful poems.

Are you familiar with the BBC program “Ready, Steady, Cook”? Two celebrities are invited to buy 10 pounds’ worth of groceries at a supermarket. These ingredients are handed over to two chefs, who then have 20 minutes to transform them into exquisite dishes. I am convinced that you could – in similar fashion – transform a turd into a question mark that plumbs the deepest depths of life, love and death. You take what we know and serve it differently. And so we see the “dress so rumpled, it looked like / the creases had been ironed in.”

In your poems, intricate emotions are reflected in everyday objects, making them highly palatable for big boys like me, who are often terrified by the lyrical rollercoaster ride that some poets wish to force upon us. Yet your restraint makes those emotions all the more intricate, because you take the reader by the hand and show them the unexpected places and objects where love and loss reside. You do not serve up a smorgasbord of grief and passion. Instead you ask: “Is it wrong to think of all the years of roast meat, crispy potatoes, / that had narrowed your arteries to winding lanes?” Which may seem rather lame when read out of context, but by then the reader already knows that the maker of those crispy potatoes is the grandmother who took you in as her fourth child following the untimely death of your mother. And soon she too will join “those missing, those missed.”

Which brings me, finally, to the most intriguing aspect of your book: the fact that the poems are/seem interconnected, forming a narrative bound by a tragic thread that extends throughout your life, from the 49th day after your birth. This narrative element is so strong, in my opinion, that I have chosen to refer to this tragedy in vague terms, as one would when reviewing a thriller. I am even inclined to go one step further, posting this advice to readers: skip the second poem (clip together pages 11-12 and 13-14!) and return to it once you have read the rest. It will shed new light (cast a shadow?) on that which you have already absorbed, forcing you to re-read and reassess that which you have already savoured with great relish. As if the chicken you ate turns out to be crocodile.

[Tshiamo January · Rating 3 out of 5]

definitely going to be buying more poetry colleections..

[Zookey . · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Megans beautiful poetic collection. Her presentation of her poetry is gentle and allows for the non-poetry reader to travel with her in her well thought words. I enjoyed assisting in the book launch of this book. This book deserves a space in your book shelf.