Bird of Oblivion

' David Pollard has the poet's preoccupation with the limitations of language in his compelling collection, Bird of Oblivion. He approaches the painful subject of a loved one's dementia obliquely, often using nautical metaphors to explore how it feels to be utterly powerless. This distancing technique frees him to write with unflinching honesty, taking the reader straight to the heart of suffering.
The flowing, unpunctuated lines and surging rhythm mirror the energy of the sea. The darkness in this collection is illuminated by moments of grace. There is a psalm-like beauty in these lines. The speaker's quest for meaning is precarious, almost breaking down in the moving elegy, Agenda Review David Pollard brings a lifetime's intellectual stringency to his work, yet never loses sight of the human heart.
In Bird of Oblivion, his lyrical gifts have found a deep seam of emotion. Here are poems which hang together as if written in a single sweep. And yet each remains a quiet gem with its own story to unpack. On one level, Bird of Oblivion is a moving response to his wife's deepening dementia. But like all the best poetry, it invites different interpretations of its core theme. Loss is ultimately a journey we all travel.
Though bleak, loss is not without its compensations. These poems suggest we can look for, and sometimes recover, something of the essence of what has slipped away. The collection opens with 'Love Poem':.