Poetry review – WIDDERSHINS: Merryn Williams finds an authentic mixing of sadness and hope in a new collection by Kathryn Daszkiewicz
Widdershins
Kathryn Daszkiewicz
Bowstring Poetry
ISBN 978-1-0676720-1-0
£10
‘Widdershins’ means travelling anti-clockwise, circling left instead of right, and it’s supposed to be unlucky, even sacrilegious, to walk around a church in this way. So, in a fine poem, “Walking widdershins”, Daszkiewicz describes a circular walk past a ‘summer lake’ where she has been happy:
I led the way for unhallowed feet
to tread the spongy floor of the yew wood
a sacred space I never should have shared.
Now it’s November and the speaker is alone, a ‘wounded soul’ and walking in the other direction, but the ritual is important to her, the autumn landscape quietly consoling.
This is a strong, sad collection. Much of it is about an intimate relationship which went wrong and the first set of poems, “Five Burials”, refers to some famous ancient graves but is actually about burying the memory of someone who probably is not dead. There are some brilliant images here, like Viking swords, once decorated with garnets but now ‘dulled with dirt and rust’, and mammoth tusks in the tomb of the Red Lady of Paviland. In “No Going Back” the speaker has been lured into a sordid underground bar by an unpleasant man, and it still somehow smells of him. Memories are ‘never-bursting bubbles’ which keep rising. We all know certain places, innocent in themselves, which have been tainted by painful memories.
Talking of unpleasant men, there is a fine sequence, “Quicksilver” about a Restoration poet, the promiscuous, pox-ridden John Wilmot, earl of Rochester. A dangerous, glamorous man, ‘burnt out at 33’, whose verses we can admire but whom thankfully we don’t have to live with. One of the things he did was
spreading pox to maid to page to wife
and to the infant son who died at ten
After three and a half centuries, this poet pins him and his lifestyle accurately.
Yet I don’t want to imply that all these poems come from the dark side. Some speak of a determined struggle, after a hard time, to return to normality. Nature is healing; we can respond to an acorn with its jewel-like qualities or the flight of an egret. There is a beautiful wistful poem about monogamy:
SWANS, THOUGH
mate for life
and now his cold
sixth decade has rolled in
after he spills the details
of serial hook-ups
leaving her alarmed
at what he might acquire
she wants to take him
to the frozen lake
where on the bank,
out of their element
the graceful shapes,
whiter than white,
of cob and pen
are waiting,
serene,
for the earth
to turn.
There is also a sequence, “The Length of Time it Takes to See the Light”, about returning to Leeds, ‘the city that unmade me’, many years after graduating from the university. Some of the grand Victorian buildings have been knocked down and the cover features two little stone owls, probably about to fall apart. The poet remembers studying, and taking tranquilisers, and how the owl is supposed to symbolise wisdom. Her conclusion is that it’s possible, perhaps with some help from a counsellor, to understand one’s past and recover from traumas:
Only when, like the owl,
you can twist your head,
so far backward
as to take the past in whole –
its mess of blood and bone –
will it take on a palatable shape
and what must be discarded
is made plain.
Kathryn Daszkiewicz is a remarkable poet and her new book deserves very close reading.
Oct 5 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Kathryn Daszkiewicz
Poetry review – WIDDERSHINS: Merryn Williams finds an authentic mixing of sadness and hope in a new collection by Kathryn Daszkiewicz
Widdershins
Kathryn Daszkiewicz
Bowstring Poetry
ISBN 978-1-0676720-1-0
£10
‘Widdershins’ means travelling anti-clockwise, circling left instead of right, and it’s supposed to be unlucky, even sacrilegious, to walk around a church in this way. So, in a fine poem, “Walking widdershins”, Daszkiewicz describes a circular walk past a ‘summer lake’ where she has been happy:
I led the way for unhallowed feet
to tread the spongy floor of the yew wood
a sacred space I never should have shared.
Now it’s November and the speaker is alone, a ‘wounded soul’ and walking in the other direction, but the ritual is important to her, the autumn landscape quietly consoling.
This is a strong, sad collection. Much of it is about an intimate relationship which went wrong and the first set of poems, “Five Burials”, refers to some famous ancient graves but is actually about burying the memory of someone who probably is not dead. There are some brilliant images here, like Viking swords, once decorated with garnets but now ‘dulled with dirt and rust’, and mammoth tusks in the tomb of the Red Lady of Paviland. In “No Going Back” the speaker has been lured into a sordid underground bar by an unpleasant man, and it still somehow smells of him. Memories are ‘never-bursting bubbles’ which keep rising. We all know certain places, innocent in themselves, which have been tainted by painful memories.
Talking of unpleasant men, there is a fine sequence, “Quicksilver” about a Restoration poet, the promiscuous, pox-ridden John Wilmot, earl of Rochester. A dangerous, glamorous man, ‘burnt out at 33’, whose verses we can admire but whom thankfully we don’t have to live with. One of the things he did was
spreading pox to maid to page to wife
and to the infant son who died at ten
After three and a half centuries, this poet pins him and his lifestyle accurately.
Yet I don’t want to imply that all these poems come from the dark side. Some speak of a determined struggle, after a hard time, to return to normality. Nature is healing; we can respond to an acorn with its jewel-like qualities or the flight of an egret. There is a beautiful wistful poem about monogamy:
SWANS, THOUGH
mate for life
and now his cold
sixth decade has rolled in
after he spills the details
of serial hook-ups
leaving her alarmed
at what he might acquire
she wants to take him
to the frozen lake
where on the bank,
out of their element
the graceful shapes,
whiter than white,
of cob and pen
are waiting,
serene,
for the earth
to turn.
There is also a sequence, “The Length of Time it Takes to See the Light”, about returning to Leeds, ‘the city that unmade me’, many years after graduating from the university. Some of the grand Victorian buildings have been knocked down and the cover features two little stone owls, probably about to fall apart. The poet remembers studying, and taking tranquilisers, and how the owl is supposed to symbolise wisdom. Her conclusion is that it’s possible, perhaps with some help from a counsellor, to understand one’s past and recover from traumas:
Only when, like the owl,
you can twist your head,
so far backward
as to take the past in whole –
its mess of blood and bone –
will it take on a palatable shape
and what must be discarded
is made plain.
Kathryn Daszkiewicz is a remarkable poet and her new book deserves very close reading.