After revisiting her mother in Britain, Helen Jarvis reflects on voice & change, back in Melbourne. As a co-editor for Catchment, Peter Roberts also finds links between this poet’s own sense of craft & her father’s work as a compositor of metal type.
Fleeting Shades – Two poems by Helen Jarvis
by Peter Roberts
Helen Jarvis grew up in England but has lived in Williamstown, Victoria, for many years. She published her first collection of poetry, The Kindness of Water, in March 2025.
Her work deals with place in a way that is reflective yet attentive to the importance of nuance and detail in addressing the emotional, spiritual and physical contours of the locations we have inhabited.
This essay will explore her work by examining two poems – ‘Restless’ and ‘Compositor’ – that reference not only her relationship with her mother and father respectively, but also her experience of emigration.
The verse captures the sense of loss and of feeling foreign in both her original home and her new one, as well as gifts that we inherit or learn from family which can spur both inspiration and skill as a poet.
‘Restless’ finds Jarvis on a visit to England, to see her family, and ponders what may have happened if she had made different decisions in life, particularly related to where she would reside:
Restless
In my mother’s country, I trace the fleeting shades
of childhood. Throats gulp plosives, pitched too high;
I wonder how I’d sound if I had stayed.
Out on the estuary, sanderlings serenade
the wind, skim the goose-tide that wanes and sighs
in my mother’s country, tracing fleeting shades
through spiral casts of lug-worms, silt and clay.
The streets flow polyester. Walking them, a spy,
I wonder how I’d sound, if I had stayed.
The lovely buildings crack with rain, decayed;
department stores now reek of vapes and fries.
In my mother’s country, I trace fleeting shades.
My mother’s mind runs restless as the waves.
Mired in unyielding time, the days slip by.
I wonder how we’d sound, if I should stay.
Down in the eel-grass, stints and dunlins wade.
I wish her calm, between saltmarsh and sky.
In my mother’s country, I trace fleeting shades
and wonder how I’d sound if I could stay.
It is a villanelle, but with adjustments in form that dispense with having each of the repeated lines identical, introducing subtle changes to great effect.
The poem opens ‘In my mother’s country, I trace the fleeting shades / of childhood’. Yet the England to which the poet has returned is not the same as the one she left: ‘The lovely buildings crack with rain, decayed; / department stores now reek of vapes and fries.’
A reassuring homecoming is very quickly replaced by the feeling of being ‘a spy’, an agent of another country. This feeling of displacement in the human world, as an outsider, is balanced, however, by the evocation of great beauty in the natural environment.
‘Out on the estuary, sanderlings serenade / the wind, skim the goose tide that wanes and sighs’: Jarvis writes with great precision in both language and rhythm, allowing her to create images which take the reader to the landscapes she is observing.
Yet the estuary also becomes a metaphor for her mother, whose ‘mind runs restless as the waves. / Mired in unyielding time, the days slip by.’
The sense of time and the timeless is present with all its fragility, and is further developed though subtle changes in the second repeated line of the poem, to relate this directly to the familiar experience of many emigrants.
‘I wonder how I’d sound if I had stayed’ or ‘I wonder how we’d sound, if I should stay’ to ‘how I’d sound if I could stay’: these reflections are a brilliant use of this verse-form, giving variations on the repeated phrasing required in ending stanzas in a villanelle, moving through time, the relational context and a sense of obligations in two different worlds.
This is beautifully nuanced writing that presents a range of possibilities which all evoke feelings of being trapped between the decisions of the past and the circumstances of the present.
In the final stanza the poet returns to the estuary, and in a truly heart-rending way allows herself to dream: ‘Down in the eel grass, stints and dunlins wade. / I wish her calm, between saltmarsh and sky.’
This haunting conclusion gives the hope that her mother can be comforted by the power of beauty, by the familiar and by the reassurance which home may provide, all in a way that eludes the poet.
In the second poem ‘Compositor’, Jarvis tackles many of the same themes, but the tone is more whimsical, rather than melancholy, involving a sense of optimism, gratitude and continuity.
Compositor
My father was a hand compositor.
He filled each frame with characters in heavy
metal fonts, from left to right, with the nick upwards,
gauging the gaps between the words,
ens and ems of white space
to fit the forme.
He loved the old serif fonts, born of
prototypes hand chiseled with precision.
He scorned their digital ghosts,
that flex and shift to fit a screen,
approximations that bear clean sharp lines,
not the jag & blur of fresh ink.
When I write, I am bound
by the metallic tang and heft
of hand-forged galleys, framed by his eye
for cool white space,
the hot metal in my veins an unholy alloy
of Thames clay and the silt of the Yarra.
And whether you hear my voice
clothed in the centuries of grace that is Garamond
or in the jaunty flapper rhythms of Eric Gill,
you’ll glimpse the imprint of my father’s hands—
their dance within the margins—
that lends form to the body of my words.
Addressing the poet’s relationship with her father, there is a sense of a loss here, yet not in terms of architecture or relationships, but rather his much-cherished trade.
This is offset by their shared love of the old fonts and types employed by a hand compositor, creatively and skilfully assembling text and illustrations for letterpress printing.
This process involved composing, out of metal, plates that would then be covered in ink and literally pressed against paper, to produce newspapers, books, pamphlets, etc.
Jarvis is specific in her reference to the old types ‘Garamond’ (as ‘an old serif font’) and the ‘jaunty flapper rhythms of Eric Gill’ (a Twentieth Century letter cutter and typeface designer of note) and a disdain for ‘their digital ghosts, that flex and fit to a screen, / approximations’.
Readers may wonder about the spelling of the word ‘forme’ at the end of the first stanza. In letterpress printing, forme refers to an iron or steel frame used to securely hold composed type, plates and spacing material in preparation for printing.
In this sense, Jarvis shares with her father the ability to work within a form, as he did in formes.
In the third stanza, she makes direct reference to the connection between her father’s profession and her own vocation as a composer, a poet, whose lines are ‘framed by his eye / for cool white space’.
This sense of an inherited or learned understanding regarding space, what not to say, where to leave room for emphasis and how to draw attention – or the ability of absence to create meaning – are all powerful tools for a poet, printer, painter or musician.
The theme of emigration is addressed again, but this time from a position of strength, where the poet benefits from having the ‘hot metal in my veins an unholy alloy / of Thames clay and the silt of the Yarra.’
This is a truly magnificent image, reinforced in the final stanza by the wonderful concluding lines ‘you’ll glimpse the imprint of my father’s hands— / their dance within the margins— / that lend form to the body of my words.’
Connection is a clear theme in both poems – strong between father and daughter, but lost or incredibly hard to find between the present and the place that contained her childhood and younger life.
Yet at the end of the second poem, Jarvis refers to herself as an alloy – a combination of two or more metals, commonly used in letter press printing, and employed specifically because they provide superior performance to a single metal.
Such poetry is a composite – if you will – of two places, rich in experiences which cannot now be separated, and that in this form brings both feelings of comfort and loss, connection and alienation, due to the effect of memory and its desire to relocate our attachment with places of significance: these ‘fleeting shades’ are pivotal to our own sense of self and identity.
This is great poetry which is masterful in its breadth of understanding of time, place and humanity, and staggering in the precision of its words, metaphors and rhythms.
The Kindness of Water by Helen Jarvis can be purchased by following this link: The Kindness of Water | 5 Islands Press