Ella
Frears’s debut is a collection of wry, vivid poems whose power lies in
their intimacy. They are as insistent as they are circumspect, drawing
close to the reader’s ear and bringing them into confidence. The engine
of Shine, Darling is one of
strength, of fortitude in confronting and surviving the world, of a
lifted-chin audacity – ‘There was pain,’ the speaker allows, ‘but it was
not new pain.’ Frears’s work is world-weathered rather than
world-weary, delighted by service stations, fucking on bins in Cornwall,
in constant communion with the moon. It lives for the power-play of
people, of the pull of the sea, the smoky air – ‘Stormy, sticky with
flies’ – and tangled underbrush where the land ends. Her characters test
each other, experimenting with the boundaries of physical violence, of
punishment, of traps, all the while drawing the reader into a complicity
that gives these poems all their daring, electrifying muscularity. In Shine, Darling,
the desire to expose and disclose wrestles with defence and defiance.
The result is exhilarating, a ‘glorious full-bodied’ debut collection
with the draw of an adamant tide.