Thoughts on The Colour of Rain by Susan Utting

The Colour of Rain by Susan Utting

(Two Rivers Press, 2024)

In four book sections, like the four seasons, Utting shares poems that ushers nature up close. These are highly imaginative stanzas written in a variety of forms that touch on themes such as (possible) autobiographies and dreams.

Here is an example from The Innocence of Trees:

                        There were trees:

            a tunnel of pines that knew no difference,

            night from day, winter, summer, here

or there. They meant no harm, the pines,

not a twig or sprig of harm among them.

Trees can form the backdrop to enchanting stories in this book, such as in the poem In Wayland Wood:

And the leaves fell on them;

and there was no trail to follow

no skipping back hand-in-hand

through yellow and gold, red

                                                leaf and bracken, no back to the

 fire in the hearth, pot on the stove,

scold of their mother’s tongue,

hush of their father’s voice.

I shall read Utting’s other books now.

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Stephen Paul Wren (April 2025)