Imperium

"Imperium" opens with a high seriousness rare in contemporary poetry. Seven 'sacraments' - meditations on those moments at which the sacred can still touch our lives - are followed by nineteen sonnets dedicated to the 'dismembered spirit' of the poet's father. But the collection is dominated by the title poem, a fine successor to the historical sequences which distinguished Hilary Davies' last collection, "In a Valley of This Restless Mind". Using a range of voices and perspectives, she creates a narrative of the Napoleonic Wars, taking us from Chatham Docks to Aboukir, from a Glamorgan foundry to Trafalgar. Here and in the book's final sequence, 'Southwark', which swings between a prehistoric 'wattenmeer' and the London of 1958, then back to Roman times via a wonderfully riotous Elizabethan South Bank, Davies satisfies us both emotionally and intellectually, drawing from her historical sources a rich, invigorating music.