Fizzing alchemy, Raine Geoghegan's Apple Water:Povel Panni

Raine Geoghegan’s first pamphlet, Apple Water:Povel Panni, also happens to be the first collection to be published by The Hedgehog Press, so it’s worth mentioning from the outset that there are some very good production values on show here from the quality of paper through to the cover design and typesetting. All in all, it’s an excellent point of departure for both poet and publisher.

Moving on to the poetry itself, Apple Water:Povel Panni is remarkable in both conception and execution. The poems explore Romani history, employing conventional and contemporary English alongside Romani words, stirring in snippets of prose anecdotes and period photographs.

They could so easily have fallen into the trap of simulating a pastiche of some dialect or patois that once supposedly existed, but their success hinges on the poet’s conscious decision to break with the conventions of so-called authenticity. By doing so, she actually manages to make her poems far more authentic.

In other words, Geoghegan encounters a fresh perspective on Romani culture by creating a daring blend of cadences, meanings and sounds that implicitly represents her search for an expression of her own mixed identity. One such example is the poem ’Hotchiwitchi/Hedgehog’, which begins as follows:

“to bake an ‘otchiwitchi,

roll it in the clay,

drop it in the embers of yer yog.

go and sing a song,

chase a sushi down the dron,

do a little jig, jog, jog.

when you open up the clay,

the spines will come away…”

Raine Geoghegan is unashamedly modern in her portrayal of the past. The blend of Romani and English could have seemed an insurmountable problem. Instead, it lends her work a fizzing alchemy that lifts it out of the ordinary. I very much look forward to seeing where she takes her poetry next.