Poems-in-Law

Fay GreenThe Pembrokeshire Press, 4.50Jeremy Fleming

Fay Green is a solicitor who writes poems and has printed them in this slim volume.

They are mainly about the law.

Having anything published and, therefore, open to public scrutiny and criticism requires a healthy dose of courage and is worthy of admiration.

And that is particularly true of poetry, which is an extremely difficult art form, especially for those who haven't devoted every waking minute of their lives to it.

Unfortunately, the work contained in Poems-in-Law does not represent the best efforts at verse and is charmingly amateurish at best.

Mostly, the poems do not rhyme.

Which is fine as it goes, if you think yourself well equipped to dispense with convention.

However, it is doubtful that Ms Green is a sufficiently polished poet to meet the high challenge of free verse.

Her poems ramble in such a way that they resemble verse from a myopic distance.

That is not to say that her work is not entertaining.

For example, perhaps Ms Green has fonder memories than this reviewer of Christleton Hall - the College of Law's Chester base - but this is surely taking things a little far:

'The idealism, bud of legal thinking- justice in the spring;the quiet beauty of Christletongerminating in March sun.Law beginning to breathe here- an awakening.'

The poem Guilty? is about that old chestnut 'how can you act for someone who is guilty?' It adds little to the stock answers uttered daily by lawyers around the UK:

'It isn't easy to represent the guiltybut how do youever know? Who are you to saywhat is or isn't true?'

Who indeed? We wouldn't want to dissuade Ms Green from penning her next volume, and indeed many readers could find her work interesting and engaging.

Next time, perhaps she could include something on the vagaries of legal journalists.