A HORIZON LINE

Poems and Short Stories

 

FOREWORD

 

This remarkable book contains both poems and flash fiction that touch upon the familiar themes of the passing of time and memory.

Divided into two sections, the collection opens with the poems which are short and tend to focus on the sea, the wind, and our interaction to them. Dragouni cleverly uses these elements to remind us that we are mere mortals with a finite time upon this earth. Nature is timeless however and we are just its playthings.

The poems are small gifts: morsels of meaning that slide right past your poetry defences and lodge in your head ... it’s a measured approach, calm and contemplative ... The poems, in a way, treat the natural world as something marvellous and rare, something to be cared for and loved ... This is what Dragouni does so well: she gives us the observation of life as we’re all living it as well as glimpses of shared history, and then she slips in themes of imbalance, a sort of planetary crisis if you like. It’s the kind of gut punch good poetry provides: the solid fist inside the velvet glove. Dragouni’s poems are no less rich for being generally likable and accessible. You don’t have to love poetry to love these poems. There is no secret key required to unlock them. They speak and we all hear them loud and clear.

Less is more in poetry and the fact that these poems are short and every word counts make them very powerful. And, by its very name, flash fiction is also short and the stories that form the second section are little stories that, in a few paragraphs, are complete stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end. To achieve this in such a short space is no mean feat and these stories succeed marvellously as they direct us, subtly, to unpeel layers and reveal truths.

This is a fine book indeed that demands to be read and savoured.

Luigi Marchini