Hopscotch in the Sky

The poems in this first collection from Lucinda Jacob might be said to be understated. Their words are carefully chosen and precise. They don’t jostle for attention but speak quietly and wait to be heard. Their mood is most often reflective and sometimes mysterious. Have you ever wondered how many times you have been featured in the background of someone else’s holiday photo and taken back to ‘Texas or Kyoto?’ Even the surreal moments like the mermaids in the library or the flying grannies are gentled into view and made perplexingly everyday. These are poems that invite the reader in, assuming shared experiences and memories, like walking in the wet tar of a hot concrete road in bare feet in summer or rescuing a doll’s picnic from the rain. This is poetry of observation and carefully modulated emotion, perhaps most eloquently expressed in the sentiment of the poem The Mountains and the Sea. Exciting things may be happening there but ‘We mostly make our homes between the mountains and the sea.’ This is a sensitively illustrated and finely produced volume. It’s perhaps disappointingly slim but it offers a range of poetic forms to satisfy the national curriculum and some memorable moments. I like ‘the twig that remembers a storm’ in the poem Nature Table; the grasshoppers that ‘fall silent at our shadows edge’ in I’ll Take You There; and the bauble that escapes packing up in There’s Always One, ‘Maybe to tell us/that Christmas/is not just for Christmas.’ Hopefully, there are more poems and collections to come.