For Eva: Selected Poems 1990 - 2016

by Jim Ferguson

For Eva' provides snapshots of the poetry Ferguson has been writing over three decades.

The poems vary in subject matter. Some poems are short and snappy while others are extended meditations on modern life here on planet earth.

An original contemporary voice, whose work leaves you with a desire for more.

143 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 2, 2017

Reviews

[Tracy Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection comes from the soul. The language is lyrical yet understated, giving the reader white space in which to breathe. The mastery of For Eva is that it elevates the reader, while maintaining its quality through some significant changes in tone. The subtlety of poems like 'parallel light' is punctuated with the ferocity of political poems like 'cultural fuck-ups' and the breathless one sentence piece described as 'a monologue concerning the bombing raids on Gaza by the Israelis, December 2008.' The sequence of poems titled '20 fragments for Eva' treat their subject with extreme tenderness, dealing with love and loss, being together and apart. This idea of separation and togetherness is continued in the next section, 'In this small world', which weaves between internal and external, the quantum and the universal. Here the poet reduces matter to the scientific language of binary code, then elevates it again to the sublime heights of Dostoevsky. For Eva takes us within and outwith ourselves through poems that seek to define the soul in the context of flesh and the physical world; its division into sections suggests connectedness rather than separation. The collection ends with a sequence of poems titled 'Ms Mati Becomes a Mother.' These are distinctly feminine in imagery, an eloquent ode to mother earth in the modern age. Mati might be Eva and Eva might be Mati. Who knows? Draw your own conclusions. Read this collection. Absorb. Question. Transcend.

[Valerie Hedges · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Eva’ is a book of poetry that varies from stirring the reader up , speaking on issues facing many today, to the moving, on themes from the personal and emotional to political. ‘For Eva’ contains work that has previously been published in small press and literary magazines combined with new work and unpublished pieces written over a twenty-six-year period. This is a book that speaks with a distinct Scottish identity, but do not assume that Jim Ferguson’s poetry is always traditional, to the contrary the poems take different forms. Rather than being a book of poetry, this is a collection of each being a very individual poem.

Some are short and to the point, snappy and a reflection on issues confronting society , some are more somewhat mystical ,deep and emotional ~ all of them make the reader think and waken the senses.