Review: BITER
Reviewed by Erica Stretton
Author:
Claudia Jardine
Publisher:
Auckland University Press
ISBN:
9781776711017
Date published:
13 April 2023
Pages:
76
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$24.99
Claudia Jardine’s first poetry collection, BITER, is as ferocious and sexual as the title suggests.
Love permeates the volume, whether frank or fleshy, familial or tender. The collection mixes creative translations of the epigrams of the Palatine Anthology, a volume believed compiled in the 10th century by Constantinus Cephalas, with laugh-out-loud modern poetry prodding at feminist problems and contradictions around sexuality. A tightly-structured pantoum illustrates this, relaying a cervical smear experience, ending with ‘she stopped, and said, ‘Your cervix is iron!’ / All the more for my sexual prime!’
Jardine doesn’t hesitate to play with form; pantoums and sonnets rub shoulders with free verse. There’s a poem contained mostly in its title:
Passing Comment from a Man Dressed in White
Wearing Sunglasses Impatiently Pacing the Queue of
Cars Waiting to Board the Interislander Ferry on a
Hot Day in Picton, Delivered Through the Window
on the Passenger’s Side with All the Grace of an
Unravelling Ham Sandwich
and a limerick on encryption, privacy and titillation. But the poetry exploring tiny understandable moments, such as Thoughts Thought After Surveying the Contents of / the Fridge, or My Sister (A Cancer) Generously Gives Her Dog to / Our Parents ring with truth and the sort of love that forgives. The collection is a celebration of many facets of love through many eyes.
My Sister (A Cancer) Generously Gives Her Dog to
Our Parents
for my family
my sister has a nice name
doesn’t mean I like it when my mum looks me in the eyes
and uses it on me
years later my boss tells me the best way
to get a dog’s attention
is to call the other dog’s name
provided you have two dogs
the trick always works
and so on with sisters
I am jealous of her
star sign
she is the crab and I am the tampon
but I am understanding
understanding and graceful
the young Libra sun and moon that I am
I work hard to make sure they get our names right
at school where hers is in gold on the good walls
and my brother, a Capricorn
plays timpani in the orchestra to make a statement
when I was little
I ransacked my sister’s sticker collection
and made a collage of her blue-chip playground stocks
on the legs of her full-sized single bed
which I was so envious of
she didn’t hold it against me
when I was bigger
I read her journal
Itemised all the things she his
under her enormous double bed
ratted her out for having Smirnoff Double Blacks
in her t-shirt drawer
she didn’t hold that against me either
but
the thing
that makes my sister purse her lips
is that I have never adopted a pet
and then left the country
and now Frank has made a serious error
(but good luck explaining that to him)
he has stolen my mother’s best breast
and run off down the garden
Reviewed by Erica Stretton
