on Lucy Rose Cunningham

Artist and Poet

Lucy Rose Cunningham is an artist and a poet. Her studies and her degree are in art but I believe she sees herself as a poet first. Interval is posited as her first book, following a chapbook, Mary, Marie, Maria: after the nectar, pyre and linden tree, from the same publisher. As her titles might suggest, Cunningham often writes in what I like to call wide expanses. That was also evident in her uncollected debut work in Snow lit rev, although Interval is composed of semi-discrete shorter lyrics.

It is no surprise that lockdown has generated a great many poems (to say nothing of illnesses, and other writing and the arts). Lockdown, from 2020, followed by Days are opening up, are the occasions for Interval but not the be-all, and that is refreshing. There are humorous asides: ‘I want to hold you / but the line’s busy.’ Or En route to Morrison’s, though, knowing the author, not for the lambs’ chops: ‘Red Sky at night. Shoppers’ delight.’ But in Memories have such delicate membranes seriousness steps in, as it does most everywhere: ‘She added them to her shelf, / precariously handling preciousness.’

There is a sort of giveaway: ‘When I search for words to protect, / our thesaurus reads inoculate.’ Is there a rhyme there? It feels as if there is. A delicate balance. Nowhere is there any sense other than that a true word has been found, if it has not already come to mind. Art is in the weather: Today is a Rothko painting. In a prose passage Lead tin yellow. ‘they paint ...