It Must be a Misunderstanding by Coral Bracho; Imperium by Jay Gao; The Illustrated Woman by Helen Mort; The Arctic by Don Paterson; 12 Pamphlets by Selima Hill
It Must be a Misunderstanding: New and Selected Poems by Coral Bracho, translated by Forrest Gander (Carcanet, £15.99)
The influential Mexican poet turned 70 last year, and this generous introduction to her work is beautifully translated by Forrest Gander, himself a leading US poet. When the second poem begins, “Time will open out / like an inflatable boat / on the shore / of a dark river,” we relax into a slower, deeper pace of thought. There’s also a sense of deep play: “Right in the middle of what I want to say / there’s a long row of chairs.” Yet when this image turns out to be conjuring the confusions of terminal illness, we switch from picturing kindergartens to clinic waiting rooms – and experience ourselves doing so. Bracho’s consistently unusual images are profoundly illuminating, and her especial gift is to bend them to make us think. She can be both metaphysical and full of human emotion – often, the two at once. “Only love offers us the dimension of the real / its dark force /curving.”