Description
Dad’s Slideshow – Thumprint pocket book
Dad’s Slideshow is a sequence charting a family’s ancestry over a lifetime and includes a range of different voices – vividly captured in carefully constructed forms. Di Slaney’s deft and evocative poems are a living testimony of what survives long after the events recorded in a family album. She writes movingly about relationships, tracing links to the past which informs our understanding of the present.
What people have been saying
The pictures in this book are unfixed. Even though the shutter has clicked and folded its arms, the work of recounting a family’s history is still ongoing in Di Slaney’s sequence. These tender and questioning poems work at filling in the before and after of the decisive moment that Cartier-Bresson spoke of – that ‘dry silence after the shutter closes’, when a smile falls from a face, or a girl, turned woman, walks back into the fields she was born from.’ – Helen Ivory
ISBN: 978-1-910413-05-0
Publisher: Stonewood Press
Price: £4.99 (Thumbprint Pocket book – Poetry)
Extent: 40 pages
Publication: April 2015
Kay (verified owner) –
I have been reading and re-reading Di Slaney’s ‘Dad’s Slideshow’ for the last few months. There is much to enjoy in this pamphlet. The careful way the pamphlet has been designed reflects the formal structure of both Di’s poems and her family slideshow of poems. The opening poem, ‘On the Forestry Commission Track’ foregrounds the pamphlet’s themes and shows her deep love of her father and family.
However, Di Slaney’s collection of poems are more than an elegy for her father, her humour and warmth shines through in every poem. ‘Stitches’ and ‘Three-ply’ skilfully use her family’s penchant for home-knits as a leitmotif to not only capture that period in time but also the relations between each family member. As in knitting, it is the tension and pattern that makes a garment and so it is in Di Slaney’s poems as she uses a variety of different forms to capture each moment in time. Overall, this a touching and accomplished series of poems and I look forward to reading more of Di Slaney’s work.
Helen cooper (verified owner) –
Reading this lovely, moving collection of poems has been like looking through a photo album and filling in the gaps with my own memories. Full of the sights, sounds and quirky details of childhood, every poem brought images and emotions strongly into my mind, as well as building up a picture of a family and all the complex relationships between them. Thoroughly enjoyed.
Sheila (verified owner) –
An accessible and heart-warming collection without a trace of sentimentality and with a great deal of lift-off. Di Slaney uses the imagery of wool and knitting to great effect in showing her family to the reader especially in stitches and Three-Ply. Sheep, and the difficulties and rewards of farming life, are never far away. The use of her father’s voice in Empty Pool, Of Wolves and West of Dolgellau is inspirational. I shall be reading and rereading these poems for a long while to come.
Claire Cox (verified owner) –
What a lovely pamphlet! I hope you’re really pleased and proud of it, you should be! It’s beautifully produced – I love the dinkiness of it and the illustrations – classy! And the series on family life is so wonderfully observed and evoked. Loving the really accomplished use verse throughout as well. Thank you – it’s a real treat and reminds me a bit of my camera toting dad as well. Big thumbs up from me!!
Elly Nobbs –
The Poetry School has a great online community called CAMPUS where one can take courses and make new friends. That’s where I recently met Di Slaney and found out about her “Dad’s Slideshow”. I read the reviews. The premise attracted me – using the father’s photography and the family watching old slides on a slide projector as a way in to explore the past & the multi-generational connections. The rural setting also attracted me because I grew up on a farm. So I ordered the book. It’s beautifully produced (the camera-related artwork) and the compact size is a delight to hold. And it can be read in one sitting which is a strength. The winding together of repeating themes of place & family & photography is pleasing for me as a reader. And I am also delighted by Di’s technical prowess and subtlety with use of form & musicality. For example. I read & enjoyed the opening poem several times before realizing it was a sonnet with a conventional full-rhyme scheme! I have several favourite poems in this collection, but keep coming back to the touching “His Arms Around Her” where we are given a chance to see essential characteristics of the father. Highly recommend this book – Di manages to give us universal themes and life mysteries through zeroing in on a family’s memories. Oh and she does it with humour mixed in there too 🙂