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POETRY
Christine Coleman has
been writing poetry and short stories for more than twenty years,
and has run creative writing courses for Birmingham Adult Education
Service. In the summer of 1996, she enrolled on an Arvon Foundation
poetry course at Lumb Bank in Yorkshire, where the course tutor, Joan Poulson
, encouraged her to submit her
work to magazines. She had instant success with her poem, 'Something
Like a Stone,' which won first prize in the Envoi
poetry competition of October that same year. Since then, she has
won prizes in several other national poetry competitions and has
been published in magazines that include: Mslexia, Acumen, Frogmore
Papers, The New Writer, Poetry Life, Poetry Nottingham,
and Obsessed
With Pipework.
Inspired by her success, she enrolled on a
part-time M.A. in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent
University where she was encouraged to develop her fiction as well
as poetry. Her second novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society
, was published in October 2005.
Her pamphlet collection, Single Travellers, was
published by Flarestack in 2004, ISBN
1900397706.
Click here to read a glowing review by Joanna Boulter of Arrowhead
Press.
Her work
features in several anthologies, including Four Caves of the Heart
(Second Light Publications
, ISBN 095469340X), an anthology
of fourteen women poets. 'Writing on Water (Ragged
Raven Press 2005 ISBN 0954239784 and -Scintilla 9.
Together with three
other poets, Christine has performed under the name Late Shift
at poetry festivals and arts centres around the
country, including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2003 and St
Andrews Festival in 2005.
Click
here for some examples of Christine's poetry.
Christine also performs solo. Her appearances include: The
Poetry Café, Frome, Somerset March 2003; Poetry Café,
Covent Garden; The Leicester Poetry Society; and The
Midlands Arts Centre.
Review of Single Travellers in Sphinx Magazine.
REVIEW:
SINGLE TRAVELLERS-CHRISTINE COLEMAN __________________Flarestack
Publishing 2005 £3.00
THE POEM 'AT ATHENS AIRPORT' muses over a description of the Aegean.
It is a "flash of kingfisher,/ a peacock's eye, can't catch
that shade between/ taste of spearmint and smell of eucalyptus."
So the turquoise-blue cover with space like a canvas for readers'
imaginations is very appropriate. The same poem gives the pamphlet
its tide:
Single travellers seem to cast no shadow- landing they'll brace
themselves, not against the jolt of wheels on tarmac, but the delicate
reintegration of self to self.
Christine Coleman finds herself a single traveller now she's an
empty-nester, her grown-up daughter reminding her now and again
of her own youth. For example, in 'That Place':
She's reached that place I visited/so long ago I'd quite forgotten/
how I used to tuck my left hand
in the small, back left-hand pocket of his /Levi's as we trod the
air/an inch above the pavement
and my heart, a supernova,/flaunted itself on my face with such
dazzle/that passers-by would flinch and shield their eyes.
There are imaginative detours too. There's the dedication required
to become a seal, tackling a migraine like a beachcomber, a snake
stall at Kowloon, Goldilock's dreams of bears disturbed by her newborn,
and a chilling ending to 'Storing Onions'.
This is an enjoyable journey with a confident, generous traveller,
one who doesn't brashly over-signpost a tedious museum and make
you wonder why you've not discovered the eighth wonder of the world.
There is a minor flaw: all the poems have a very similar conversational
tone, which is fine for a pamphlet, but I suspect Christine Coleman
is aware of this and would give a full collection more variety.
Emma Lee
Common Reader says of Single Travellers:
I loved this collection. There is something quite beautiful about
the way she writes about the different types of light. I'll never
forget the wonderful line from "Light Harvest' 'I'll feast
all winter on this hoard of light". Of all the chapbook collections
I have read so far I enjoyed this one the most.
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