Somewhere Else Entirely

by Ruth Fainlight

Ruth Fainlight is one of Britain's most distinguished poets. Born in New York City, she has lived mostly in England since the age of 15, publishing her first collection, Cages, in 1966, and her retrospective, New & Collected Poems, in 2010. Her poems 'give us truly new visions of usual and mysterious events' (A.S. Byatt). Each is a balancing act between thought and feeling, revealing otherness within the everyday, often measuring subtle shifts in relationships between women and men. Her poems ‘give us truly new visions of usual and mysterious events’ (A.S. Byatt). Each is a balancing act between thought and feeling, revealing otherness within the everyday, often measuring subtle shifts in relationships between women and men. She has always drawn on a wide range of subject-matter, yet the arc of her attention has shifted in her later work, the meaning and effect of the passage of time becoming more central and fascinating as she ages. Written during her 80s, the poems of Somewhere Else Entirely are shadowed by the death of her husband Alan Sillitoe. The book also includes several short pieces of prose, memoirs of childhood years spent in the firstly, those from zero to five years old, then a group about the ages between 10 and 15, during the Second World War, when their mother took her and her brother Harry back to their American birthplace.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published November 15, 2018

About the author

Ruth Fainlight is a poet, short story writer, translator and librettist.

Fainlight was born in New York, but has mainly lived in England since she was fifteen, having also spent some years living in France and Spain. In addition to her own works, Fainlight has also provided criticism for BBC Radio, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and numerous other publications.

She was married to the British writer Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) and has a daughter, Susan and a son, David who is a photographer for The Guardian. She lives in London.

She has twice been Poet in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

Reviews

[Alarie]

Fainlight was born in the U.S., but has lived in England most of her life and is considered one of Britain's most distinguished poets. For that reason, I’m not going to post a low rating simply because I didn’t engage with her work. I found most of this collection too bare bones, simply prose descriptions of a moment. There were a few exceptions. I particularly enjoyed the humorous sarcasm in “ The Ides of March.” In mid-March, she imagines herself a farmer:

“…Stiff with dread, the farmer thinks of God,
but how often that god has failed him.
His God is as helpless as he.
(He must be a very minor god
who cannot even control the weather.)

Somewhere on the other side of the universe
lives the Master God, the God of gods…

To understand him, remember
your own pleasure watching hundreds of ants
desperately working to shore up
the structure shattered when you lifted a stone
heedlessly from the side of the road
and all their effort crumbled….”

Then, near the end of the book, Fainlight woke me up. She grouped a short section of prose poems (I would have called them excerpts from memoir if they weren’t in a poetry book). I enjoyed going back to NYC before my own birth, when she, her mother, and brother lived with an aunt and uncle while her dad was off to WWII.

[Ren Nadaraja · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book, I liked the first few poems, some more than others. Her writing gets longer towards the end. It’s quite rich in information that you find in novels, historical fiction and coming of age novels. It’s got flair and sometimes it was just boring; I would recommend it but I would say take your time as I did. It’s something to enjoy and savour. It’s got emotion, while making an impact and has a way of making the reader and viewer think deep.