The Braille of the Sea

Those familiar with the spiritual poetry of Walmsley know that he writes like an angel. This does not mean sweetness and light. Rather, this means a voice, or voices, which use words as DNA fragments: alive; runic; beautiful; unprotected; on a quest - parallel, or not, to the poet's own quest. `Braille' here implicates sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. The book is in fact not a collection, it is one continuous poem. Elements expand and contract, interpenetrate translucently: vastness and detail (`an Irish blanket makes the chair better'). Flashes, too, of other poets (are they really there?): the pre-Socratics, Vaughan, Dickinson, others. Other flashes, of 2018: `terrorists', `money.' The poet urges his listeners (who are they? himself? the reader?) to concentrate, because voices, whether internal or external, are only aids to the heart. Gordon Walmsley is from New Orleans but he has lived in Europe for most of his life. He now lives in Copenhagen.