I Could Become that Woman by Ruth, Sybil

I Could Become That Woman celebrates desire and the way it disrupts our lives, turning friends into lovers, partners into parents. The poems weave a world where identity is constantly re-created as the imagination hijacks confession, as fantasy and memory collide.

Sibyl Ruth's first collection of poems, Nothing Personal, was published by Iron Press and her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. She was the Poet Laureate in Birmingham, where she lives, working at the Midland Arts Centre. Some of her other poems appeared in an earlier Five Leaves' publication, The Dybbuk of Delight: an anthology of Jewish women's poetry. Sibyl Ruth has a German-Jewish mother and a Welsh father.

Full House
Surrounded by stubborn furniture,
all yours.

Double-sided bookcases,
stacks of little tables.
Oak cabinets, sideboards, cupboards.
The uncomfortable chaise longue,
an out-of-tune piano.

Pieces glower from every corner.
Obstructing windows,
they cast odd shadows,
darken doorways.

There's plenty of room, you say.
I could make the occasional gesture with a duster.
Be more accommodating.

While they graze my shins for fun
snag sleeves, tweak fingernails,
nip my vulnerable toes.
And they won't be moved.

I'd imagined owning less.
Somewhere unvarnished, uninsured
--- bare walls and floors,
with wind chimes, maybe lanterns.
Stars looking down on a shared emptiness.
.
"Sibyl Ruth is a powerful and engaging poet. She has a marvellous ear for the ironies of day to day life and a natural sympathy with outsiders." - Jonathan Davidson

"She has Carol Ann Duffy's ability to choose every word of the maximum resonance, but there is a tender, quiet note here too." - Angela Topping

"....when she hits the right note, she does it magnificently, as in Baxter or Night Feed. She has that ability to use just the right words, as in True Confessions, where she captures the awkwardness of first sexual contact exactly right and with a dark humour: “In bed she can’t say what she’d like./He doesn’t know where to put himself” - Seam

Reviews of I Could Become that Woman

	22 April 2008
Reviewed by customer: Andre Fellows
This poet is clearly lost, hiding, in a world of words in which poetry is seen as an academic extension of language and not of being alive. Poetry, the true poetry, must transcend language - Ruth's work, sadly, never comes close and remains stale as a result. Andre Fellows

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