Poetry review – SAFE GROUND: Jennifer Johnson accompanies Rosie Johnston through some poetic reflections on past experiences
Safe Ground
Rosie Johnston
Mica Press
ISBN 978-1-869848-40-8
43pp £10.00
I had not previously come across the work of Rosie Johnston but recognise her name as someone who has reviewed books for London Grip for longer than I have. In this collection I was happy to find poetry that communicates strongly.
This collection consists of 28 poems and a moving prose piece. The poems are written in a variety of styles and are easily accessible. I want to focus on a few poems to highlight some of the techniques successfully used by Johnston in this collection.
The sea, in one way or another, appears in several poems. Johnston writes at the end of the first poem “Carnlough Bay”
Constant in it all, so
many years, the
need for
sea.
Beside the sea earlier in the same poem Johnston writes
Here, where
no people
are
I breathe. Expand again, at last, to my full size.
By means of an Alice in Wonderland change in size, these lines express the feeling the poet has in this place where she feels most fully herself. The last longer line adds to the sense of expansion and the unequal line lengths throughout the poem reflect the ebb and flow of the waves. This fundamental identification with the sea can also be found at the end of “Glitterball” when even in London
in every tube-train’s creak, a seagull laughs.
With every passing van, a swish of surf.
The sea is also central to the poem “Nayland Rock Shelter, 2022” which is set in Margate. It begins with Eliot’s famous quote (‘On Margate sands/I can connect/Nothing with nothing’) and offers a contradictory point of view
Blousy old girl, yellowed fingers,
a cough,
Margate embraces us all.
“‘Reflection’” introduces another long-lasting companion, an old mirror. The poem begins
Mirror, you old jobsworth, you know
all my fractures and keep your counsel.
The poem moves on from the poet’s childhood to reach a more painful adulthood when
Between my brows one line of anguish
cut two years later when he left.
Sly memory: it skims the worst
away as if it never happened.
The title poem “Safe Ground” is made up of four parts. Part 1 begins
Gravid time. Still air. A drop
hanging
from a leaf. A wish unspoken.
The word ‘hanging’ on its own line emphasises the sense of suspension and even tension. More positively, the experience of being delighted with a new baby is touchingly expressed in the lines
I hold the clock’s hands, wrest
this hour to a stop
while you sleep in my lap.
This sense of time standing still is later echoed in ‘Breath held I watch / my baby’.
The second part of “Safe Ground” records a very different experience. It makes effective use of the metaphorical combined with the literal as in the lines
Your teens thunder through me,
blades on your wheels
harrowing your world and mine.
The word ‘harrowing’ is used both metaphorically (like blades harrowing the soil) and literally in the emotional sense. Several more powerful images are then used to describe a painful family break-up – for instance ‘crash-dive sea’ and ‘father’s quicksand’. This unhappy section ends on a happier note with a simple expression of the poet’s love for her son despite the destructive nature of the parental relationship.
You are loved, sweet child,
wherever you are,
whatever you dare become.
The next short section of “Safe Ground” provides another example of combining the metaphorical and the literal.
Grandma
tightens a thread –
‘the weft of our lives.'
And in the fourth section the poet mother uses hands to convey a time of difficult relationship as the son grows older
Still my hand’s refused. Pocketed.
The hand
that fed you in your highchair.
But later it is the ‘simplicity’ (which perhaps includes honesty and humility?) that firms up the relationship on ‘safe ground’.
Beside a silver-quill sunset
simplicity
walks us to safe ground.
The final piece in the collection is a prose poem called “Laughing and Grief: Paris, 2020” which also combines the present experience with memories from the past. It starts with a description of a meal in Paris ‘supreme de volaille with dauphinoises’. The French words place the reader in the culinary culture of France with its ‘understated expertise’. Cognac follows the meal. Then the poet remembers her father: ‘I feel the warmth of you here now, Dad. Or it might be the cognac.’ She goes on to explain that ‘I was away on a literary trail to Montparnasse this morning. To find Beckett.’ After not having much success she comes across an old man, Henri, ‘his eyes all gentleness when he smiled, all loneliness when he didn’t.’ He leads her to ‘Beckett’s plain granite slab’ and then shows her a number of other notable tombs in the Père Lachaise cemetery. At one point, Henri’s gentle guided tour is disturbed by ‘an elegant young Chinese woman in a black face mask and trench coat’, about whom Johnston confesses ‘She mesmerised me. Her structured solitude, as if she carried a fortress around her more visibly than I did.’
It is after this strange interruption that the poet recalls her father again.. After Henri mutters a quotation from Horace, she tells him that her father used to teach Classics – ‘Laughing and Grief, as the Mock Turtle used to say’. Henri now has to use all his ‘flawless courtesy’ to avoid noticing how this memory has suddenly triggered in Johnston an ‘emotional collapse I did my best to hide’. In spite of this, however, the poem goes on to suggest that the encounter with Henri has provided some healing and resolution.
I highly recommend Safe Ground as it intelligently and powerfully communicates both the pain and joy of a complex life, lived by a cultured woman who has resolved ‘Like father, like daughter, I would live my life to the full and embrace love.’
Jun 3 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – Rosie Johnston
Poetry review – SAFE GROUND: Jennifer Johnson accompanies Rosie Johnston through some poetic reflections on past experiences
I had not previously come across the work of Rosie Johnston but recognise her name as someone who has reviewed books for London Grip for longer than I have. In this collection I was happy to find poetry that communicates strongly.
This collection consists of 28 poems and a moving prose piece. The poems are written in a variety of styles and are easily accessible. I want to focus on a few poems to highlight some of the techniques successfully used by Johnston in this collection.
The sea, in one way or another, appears in several poems. Johnston writes at the end of the first poem “Carnlough Bay”
Beside the sea earlier in the same poem Johnston writes
By means of an Alice in Wonderland change in size, these lines express the feeling the poet has in this place where she feels most fully herself. The last longer line adds to the sense of expansion and the unequal line lengths throughout the poem reflect the ebb and flow of the waves. This fundamental identification with the sea can also be found at the end of “Glitterball” when even in London
The sea is also central to the poem “Nayland Rock Shelter, 2022” which is set in Margate. It begins with Eliot’s famous quote (‘On Margate sands/I can connect/Nothing with nothing’) and offers a contradictory point of view
“‘Reflection’” introduces another long-lasting companion, an old mirror. The poem begins
The poem moves on from the poet’s childhood to reach a more painful adulthood when
The title poem “Safe Ground” is made up of four parts. Part 1 begins
The word ‘hanging’ on its own line emphasises the sense of suspension and even tension. More positively, the experience of being delighted with a new baby is touchingly expressed in the lines
This sense of time standing still is later echoed in ‘Breath held I watch / my baby’.
The second part of “Safe Ground” records a very different experience. It makes effective use of the metaphorical combined with the literal as in the lines
The word ‘harrowing’ is used both metaphorically (like blades harrowing the soil) and literally in the emotional sense. Several more powerful images are then used to describe a painful family break-up – for instance ‘crash-dive sea’ and ‘father’s quicksand’. This unhappy section ends on a happier note with a simple expression of the poet’s love for her son despite the destructive nature of the parental relationship.
The next short section of “Safe Ground” provides another example of combining the metaphorical and the literal.
And in the fourth section the poet mother uses hands to convey a time of difficult relationship as the son grows older
But later it is the ‘simplicity’ (which perhaps includes honesty and humility?) that firms up the relationship on ‘safe ground’.
The final piece in the collection is a prose poem called “Laughing and Grief: Paris, 2020” which also combines the present experience with memories from the past. It starts with a description of a meal in Paris ‘supreme de volaille with dauphinoises’. The French words place the reader in the culinary culture of France with its ‘understated expertise’. Cognac follows the meal. Then the poet remembers her father: ‘I feel the warmth of you here now, Dad. Or it might be the cognac.’ She goes on to explain that ‘I was away on a literary trail to Montparnasse this morning. To find Beckett.’ After not having much success she comes across an old man, Henri, ‘his eyes all gentleness when he smiled, all loneliness when he didn’t.’ He leads her to ‘Beckett’s plain granite slab’ and then shows her a number of other notable tombs in the Père Lachaise cemetery. At one point, Henri’s gentle guided tour is disturbed by ‘an elegant young Chinese woman in a black face mask and trench coat’, about whom Johnston confesses ‘She mesmerised me. Her structured solitude, as if she carried a fortress around her more visibly than I did.’
It is after this strange interruption that the poet recalls her father again.. After Henri mutters a quotation from Horace, she tells him that her father used to teach Classics – ‘Laughing and Grief, as the Mock Turtle used to say’. Henri now has to use all his ‘flawless courtesy’ to avoid noticing how this memory has suddenly triggered in Johnston an ‘emotional collapse I did my best to hide’. In spite of this, however, the poem goes on to suggest that the encounter with Henri has provided some healing and resolution.
I highly recommend Safe Ground as it intelligently and powerfully communicates both the pain and joy of a complex life, lived by a cultured woman who has resolved ‘Like father, like daughter, I would live my life to the full and embrace love.’