Love's Footprint – Edited by Maree Silver and Leigh Hay
 

 

Love's footprint opens with Peter Stiles' poem Silence stilling and preparing the reader to hear beneath the words presented in this feast of love poetry. The title suggests the timelessness of love, and the poems sustain the theme through their focus on the cycle of life and human relationships, mirrored in the cycle of nature. It has been a joy to read this anthology by poets whose experiences speak from and into vulnerability, risk, ageing and loss, in ways that are believable and moving. There were many notable poems which surprised and warmed me. I was particularly held by the beautiful frustration of a poet who tries to find adequate metaphors to point to the Mystery of Love, and then discovers the understatement which does it better. In We by Bethany Evans, 'clothes on the floor' speaks the urgency of yielding one to another. And in Que je t'aime Joan Ray uses stark clarity, 'we stayed together to the end.' Valerie Volk' s Invisible Print speaks frankly of love which transcends all we think is possible in the face of caring for an ailing loved one. You will be consoled and absorbed by the truth-telling of the poets who have in common the human and divine capacity to love in both action and word.
- MARLENE MARBURG, poet and author of Grace upon Grace.