If ever a series of poems chronicled a spiritual journey, a ‘seeking’, it’s the pieces in Fragments by Victoria Bennett.

In 2006 Victoria, founder of Wild Women press an author of two previous poetry collections, took part in the BBC2 series The Convent, spending 40 days and nights living within the Convent of the Poor Clares, Crossbush, an enclosed Franciscan Monastery in West Sussex.

In her introduction Victoria tells the reader that she holds no faith, was raised without religious influence of any kind. She does acknowledge, ‘a sense of my own spiritual journey, both as a woman and as a poet.’ She also tells of the loss of a child during pregnancy and her need to find understanding about that loss, and of her simple desire, ‘to quietly listen.’ It is in the light of this that she offers her Fragments, her reflections, a poem written for each day she was in the Convent.

Day 1 gives us her expectations, and her tentative acceptance of the change that she believes she is opening herself up to:

‘Love unfolds its arms to me
and asks if I am willing.

I falter, look for traps…

…find myself saying

come in, come in
and enter my house,

even if its ways will break
the careful order of my rooms.’

From this position she experiences many awakenings and false dawns, she reaches out then draws back, finds joy and despair, shows us gentleness and tumult, feels fear and liberation. This is a collection of juxtapositions:

Day 7
‘My soul begins to stir,
imprints a tiny flutter in the dark….

feel the wings of love
as they shed their sticky casing,
learn to fly.’


Day 21
‘…do not leave me here,
where my cry
is emptied into wind.

I am stripped, whipped
blind and stumbling,
my bones made of glass’


Day 30
‘Last night, I felt love fill my eyes…

It knocked on my door,
calling my name:

this time,
I let it in.’


At once fragile and strong, the poems give insights into the experience by recurring themes or metaphors. ‘Love’ is used often, a byword for faith, acceptance and transformation. ‘Home’ becomes a simile for resistance, then self and hope. The natural world and the elements are invoked repeatedly,

‘these are the days
of desert wanderings’, (Day 23)

‘I find small messages
left out under the sky’, (Day 17)

‘I wanted perpetual light,
always midsummer.
Instead I find Sister Night’ (Day 26)

and

‘..what fire
you have built here.
What heat; what flame’ (Day 36)

But for me the clearest and most revealing insights come when the poet invokes the idea of a butterfly / moth, a chrysalis opening to ‘love’;


‘I am becoming
Butterfly Maiden –
my skin revealing
dusty symmetry…
maps of a universe
as yet unknown’ (Day 2)

‘feel the wings of love
as they shed their sticky casing,
learn to fly.’ (Day 7)

‘…bright wings
of sticky incandescence
beating, beating…

wait for the sun
to dry its wings,
help it fly.’ (Day 22)


Images of water / river / sea are also used to great effect. It seems as if nothing less than a sea change is experienced, beginning on Day 16:

‘something finds me,
holds me, rocks me…

and with the water
comes surrender,
and in the water,
comes embrace.’

continuing on Day 31,

‘My heart beats steady,
invisibly changed
by this constant, cradling sea.’

Until on Day 40 we hear the simple, prayer-like evocation,

‘let me keep flowing.’


Throughout, although cleverly crafted, the poems retain an immediacy and freshness of language. I do not know how much honing and polishing was done after leaving the Convent, but regardless the pieces seem to stem directly from experience / feeling rather than to be laboured over or manufactured in any way. This collection seems to be the poetic equivalent of ‘Dear Diary’, reflections that speak from the very centre of a slowly unguarded self undergoing transformation, and which invite a similar, unrefined (in the positive senses of the word), intrinsic response from the reader.

Fragments shows us the poet both certain and uncertain. The collection illustrates the act of becoming, of experiencing the lows and highs of what it is to truly examine the nature of self and thus to truly feel. Further, it presents us with an unfinished journey, encourages the reader to imagine what the soul that continues to flow might create. In many ways, the true revelation of Victoria Bennetts’s experience in the Convent is yet to come, and I shall look forward to her next collection with relish.

Lovely review, Tc. I did catch one or two of those programmes, but somehow managed to miss the others, so I can't remember Victoria. What struck me most though, was how affecting that time at the convent was for all those women, whatever their belief or lack of it beforehand. Your review with the beautifully selected quotes gives a glimpse of how deep those feelings went - thank you for that - and I've added Fragments to my Christmas list.

Nell.

Thanks for commenting Nell, nice to know someone reads these things! Hope you enjoy the collection when you get it.
x
tc

I found the Fragments contained within this review a delight. Thank you for such a lively article.
Nicky.