Connect, communicate
Alison Chisholm is impressed with a well-crafted poem about an understanding that goes beyond words
Poetry is all about communication. It’s the vehicle through which we communicate our thoughts and ideas, our delights and pains, to people we will probably never meet. In a good poem, the material in our mind is translated into a pattern of words that is both comprehensible and interesting. The reader ingests these words, and a response emerges.
There’s an additional layer to the concept of communication in Synerg y, where the poem is communicating a message about communication. It’s the moving, but never sentimental, account of someone with dementia and the solace he finds in the company of a cat.
There are plenty of poems about people with dementia. There are plenty of poems about cats. Putting the two elements together, though, provides a new and refreshing ‘take’ on both themes. This highlights the value of linking two or more strands of material in a poem, as the resulting piece is more likely to strike an original chord than poems about the individual strands could.