ALEX SKOVRON – THE MAN AND THE MAP
FIVE ISLANDS PRESS, 2003

In his introduction to a choice of George Herbert’s poems, W H Auden expressed a wish to have known Herbert personally, concluding from his poetry that he ‘must have been an exceptionally good man, and exceptionally nice as well’. On the evidence of The Man and the Map and three earlier volumes, it is tempting to imagine Auden feeling the same way about Alex Skovron. Irrespective of its subject, a Skovron poem manifests fundamental decency, self-awareness and civilisation, qualities which owe something, perhaps, to the poet’s early experiences as an émigré, from Poland, after the war.

The bulk of Skovron’s poetry is, in one way or another, concerned with matters of time and place. As Chris Wallace-Crabbe has noted, it looks both to the past and to the future, variously taking in history, art (especially music), personal memories and reflections on metaphysics or philosophy. ‘How in the world / could the twentieth century collogue with / 1300?’, Skovron asks in Sleeve Notes (1992), before going on to describe a child’s sadness on looking at an atlas: ‘Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten, / sang the maps, mysterious with longing’. As its title obliquely indicates, this latest collection continues the search for a definitive context, for somewhere that time can’t erase (interestingly, Skovron is also a keen amateur photographer), although, admittedly, some of the writing shows an increased despondency.

In two parts, The Man and the Map opens with a series of straightforward pieces depicting Skovron’s Polish childhood, then proceeds to trace a sort of narrative, evoking the journey to Australia via Israel, university days, encounters with cigarettes and girls, travels abroad, and dreams. A recollection of All Souls’ Day, for example: