Alex Josephy lives and writes in East Sussex and Italy.  She has worked as a UK state schoolteacher and university lecturer and as an NHS education adviser. Her published collections include Other Blackbirds (Cinnamon Press, pamphlet 2016), White Roads (Paekakariki Press, 2018), Naked Since Faversham (Pindrop Press, 2020) and Again Behold the Stars (Cinnamon Press pamphlet award winner, 2023). Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, been placed in Troubadour and Hippocrates prizes, and have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies.

A Little Bridge begins with a quotation: "The poem is a bridge, extending across time and encompassing all horizons", from the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani. Josephy's poetry is subtly complex, moving between people, places, and most skilfully exposing the human need to connect. Its keenly observed images and sumptuous language make it a compelling read. In this third collection, the poet continues her love affair with her dual life in the UK and Italy; the latter's Befana Witch images, its wild boars and badgers wandering through cobbled streets, its characters. The elegant title poem in the first section, 'Passerella' (literally, a small footbridge), sets the tone as the physical description of a fragile footbridge becomes something deeper: 

 

     not much more than whim, a grip between one slope and other ...

     ... every pace is a little bridge.
     little by little, it could fall into the dried-out ditch
     or pass into disuse, past repair, difficult to find
     among overgrown reed, barely spanning the pass
     between a hope and a memory of water 

 

A striking poem about the ever more frequent earthquakes in Italy and their effect is 'Frammenti', with its concrete layout displaying fragments of people’s shattered lives.  Also, the last stanza of the poem 'Afterlife':

 

     in a broken gutter; lush red fruit 
     spills in the road. A wall
     is half-rendered. Everything
     is perhaps. Perhaps it always was.

 

Two poems about Italian culture and superstitions stand out: in 'Why the Merlo Sings', a neighbour keeps a blackbird in a cage:

 

     it frets, like when a woman on the bus
     rolls out her troubles to a friend
     across the aisle 

 

and in 'Precautions', the belief that the copo d’aria wind causes ailments: 

 

   Keep your soft neck under wraps:
     This is the treasure every breeze 
     yearns to ransack.

 

In the second section, A London Bridge, the poem 'Fern' transports us back to the UK and the gloom of lockdown in a way that resonates with all who experienced it:

 

                                        half uncurled 
     segments, the shape of little flames

     reaching for the window. 
     This is the boundary of our days
     the fern and me, this room, its view
 

A home haircut becomes a tender moment in the poem 'I cut your hair'.  We experience London life with the poem 'Yoda, outside the National Gallery', and the sadness of 'Witness'; the "cleansing" of an old house:

     

     Blistered layers of wallpaper
     printed with bows
     and blossom wreaths
     fall open in the rain.
     A roll of threadbare carpet
     unspools like a tongue.

 

The third section, Easement, takes us on a journey through habitats and wildlife, with some beautiful images as in 'Leaf Life':

 

     Leaflet after leaflet     they spread gossip
     shush     one against another
     in tremblebreeze               or sway
     shaken hammocks      scattering rain

 

'Robert Hook Considers his Discovery' is a clever and original poem about the naming of cells with these arresting images:

 

     Oh, these smallest purses,
     rich beyond all expectation,

     true as the store-chambers of bees
     or music in the silence of a nunnery.

 

In the final section, Portals, there is an unexpected revisiting of childhood.  We see with clarity how the past and present join seamlessly together, the one informing the other. In 'Ghost of a Volcano', like a preview of what is to come, the child plays with a pumice stone in the bath, eschewing other toys, fascinated by its race to "burst through the surface/ again and again".

This brings us back to the earlier earthquake poems that are so relevant right now, but in childhood there is no fear for what the future may hold, no concept of death.

 

     One day, he thinks, I’ll sneak it out,
     my small grey traveller,
     hide it in a pocket.
     Hold it to my ear, like a shell,
     listen for a firestorm
     or a phoenix

 

In the poignant final poem, 'Call her Hope', the poet writes about the precarious future of our children, with great sensitivity: 

 

     Child of the child my child
     decided not to have

     if you have lullabies
     and a bedroom window

     I’ll send you a song            that carries fox calls
                     and the soft wings of an owl
                 gliding down a valley ...

     ... If you have a swimsuit
     hopscotch       a skipping rope

     I’ll float you a fin            I stole from a flying fish
                      so you can know
                 when the seas were still alive

               how they took the air.

 
This vibrant collection encourages us to savour each moment, each stage of our lives, laid out by a poet with great heart and skill.

 

Alex Josephy, A Little Bridge, Pindrop Press, £12

Jenny McRobert is a poet living in Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in The North, The Rialto, Under the Radar, and online magazines The Ghost Furniture Catalogue, The High Window, and Ink Sweat & Tears.  She won the Kathryn Bevis Prize 2024 and the Welsh Poetry Competition 2023.  Her debut collection is Silver Samovar, The High Window Press (2021). She is a founding member of Winchester Muse, a hybrid monthly poetry platform with a local, national and international presence