A Rage of Poppies

Hugh Oliver is editor-in-chief at the OISE Press.

Each of the four parts of this collection of poems concerns a deceased
member of the author’s family—daughter, sister, father, mother. That
the focus is on their deaths, and the author’s recollections of them,
makes for rather morbid reading. At the same time, if on occasions a bit
self-consciously poetic, the writing is articulate and comprehensible,
and the subjects come across quite powerfully, especially the father
(the author’s hero) and the mother (with whom she had difficulty
establishing a close relationship). The book fails to convey any
universal sense of death and human relationships, but the quality of the
poetry is good enough to warrant the publication of what is essentially
a personal document.