A Blue with Blood in It

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

Elizabeth Philips’s poetry is wonderfully organic. While each poem in
this, her third collection, is centred on a natural theme, nature is
more than a metaphor or something observed and reported on. Nature is
inextricably entwined with each subject Philips writes about; it is part
of her vision, and, as we read, it becomes part of our vision as well.

The collection’s title comes from a description of the color of
gentians. “A blue with blood in it” is a phrase that could also
describe the organic core of Philips’s writing. A quotation from Meng
Chiao explains: “When the twisted tree shall become my body / Then I
shall begin to live out my natural span.”

Philips’s words flow across the page, the line breaks as easy as
breathing. Her poetic world is a wonderful place—a place in which a
“bear came / to eat her loneliness”; in which poppy petals “like
wings of blood … [form] a stain at the base of my pupils”; in which
petals are “cut and milled / by frost … into pure absence”; in
which the exclamation “I’ve dropped my cloud” makes perfect sense.
A Blue with Blood in It is highly recommended for just about any
library.