Jason Conway's debut collection 'the wash of hours' charts the difficult territory of caring for elderly parents 'drowning by age'. His father's decline impacts the entire family. His mother becomes needy and faces a possible cancer diagnosis and his brother falls into depression. Facing all this the narrator is portrayed like a child overwhelmed by the power and terror of the sea. 'What light can come?' he asks.
We feel the pain of a son trying to shore up a disintegrating family and his awareness of the limitations of his sensitivity. 'I wish I were deaf or an unturned stone, surrounded by trees and leaves.' Swimming and drowning are strong themes here but there is also a delicate observation of the natural world; rain in coastal Spain is remembered as 'Demerara dusted caramel sponge spread with apple & blueberry jam with a sea of frosted crests.'
Conway experiments with form and approach. Some of the poems read like prose or disjointed memories. He displays a quiet deadpan humour which lifts this dark story out of melodrama. Titles like 'What my father said while delirious from a urine infection' and the ridiculousness of medical speak in 'What the Doctor Said' give the whole collection a breathing space in mood.
The final poem, the title one, ends in a moment of reflection that all this pain will gradually shift like a stifling hot summer does 'in a season of shedding'.
- Dr Lucy English - Professor of Creative Enterprise and The Spoken Word. Co-director of Lyra, Bristol Poetry Festival
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