WordsOut poems
by Godfrey
Rust
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review
of Welcome To
The
Real World
Back in 1993 Cross Rhythms reviewed Godfrey’s
Breaking The Chains book of poems and commented that “Britain
has another wordsmith to put alongside the Steve Turners and Stewart
Hendersons”. Now that book has been expanded so that alongside those witty,
incisive, thought-provoking works we’ve got another batch to take us up to
2000. Their range is dazzling – an encounter with a cathedral official in
Florence who demands Godfrey remove his straw hat so that “my balding
head is cruelly exposed to His minute examination”; the passing of an elderly
church saint; telly advertising pitched at kids; the Magi (one of four telling
poems for Christmas); or a chilling fantasy of Judas calling room service. Here
is a poet with the cultural savvy to lambast the absurdities of our culture yet
the maturity to espy the Father in the minutiae of all our lives.
Tony Cummings, Cross Rhythms, September
2000