Catching Air by Vinny Glynn-Steed (joy is the parrot that shouldn't be contained)

Published by Maytree Press, Catching Air is the debut poetry chapbook from Vinny Glynn-Steed. From Galway, his poetry has been widely published at home and abroad, appearing in journals and online in Mexico, the United States, Wales and Northern Ireland. He has featured in publications such as Windows 25th edition, Parhelion and Cinnamon Press anthology. Other credits include: Galway Review, Headstuff, Skylight 47, Crannóg, Into the Void, Bangor Journal, Tales from the Forest, The Ogham Stone, Ofi Press, ROPES, All the Sins, Mediterranean Poetry, Flight, Boyne Berries, Dodging the Rain, Poems in Profile and Drawn to the Light Press. 

This short collection exudes a joy and passion for family, the past, the natural world, and the written word. It glistens with jewels of imagery such as "Your blonde hair offset by the deep blue of the mosque" in the opening poem Delight, and "in the spectrum splash of light on a gable wall" from Pages from a Garden. Word-Gravity serves as prelude to the book when Steed throws his "dreams into space like a kite", to quote Anais Nin, in the hope of reaping "A spiral tapestry/of the most beautiful human stories/not yet told." The chapbook is dedicated to his son, Bobby, whom he names his spiral tapestry.

In a way Catching Air is a dance with the light. Last Light at Lough Tay comments on sunset on the mountains - "V for victory - the arms/of their embrace." In Pristine we listen 

To a corncrake's call comfortable under a carpet of stars

amongst the parcels of peat

under the mechanical arms of a giant glistening.

The arms here belong to a wind turbine in a high bog. I do like how man and nature co-exist in harmony in Steed's poetry. In The Iceman, Otzi of the Alps carried his "copper axe made of leather, yew and birch tar", and in Canal Bank Hole "long bottomed boats meandered by/en route to Dublin..."

"joy is the parrot that shouldn't be contained" the poet writes in The God of Broken-Down Things, despite "how sadness resides with darkness under the stairs/in a toolbox rusting..." Again, in this poem the light is at play in "silhouettes stretched out before us like all summer/mornings..." and there is a wistfulness for the past in this very likeable poem that reminds one of Fern Hill.

One Small King opens with the beautiful image of mist hanging over the bog like "a starched altar-cloth". We are asked to imagine its course, flapping down the mountain to the lake, where dotted islands are "the broken/rosary beads of your intent..." Steed shows reverence for, while finding solace in, his kingdom of bog and mountain. 

This introduction closes with a piece dedicated to Kevin Higgins and Susan Millar DuMars of Over The Edge Literary Events. The Phrase Factory is a writing class they instruct, where poets "breathe life/into new words" and "acknowledge their ephemeral fame." It is clear that Steed finds true delight in his pursuit of language, he is the "child catching air with a butterfly net" of the title poem, a buddha in praise of the earth. 

Highly recommended for its sense of wonder and adventure, Catching Air can be purchased here.