Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

“I dwell in possibility…” for the poet is touched by something out of sight to those without meaning, and act as both receptacle and fountain to those who seek a new and vivid way to portray a truth of existence.

The meaning of any poem is hopefully vague, mysterious, wrapped in subtle ambiguity and explicit in its delivery, to add the depth of music to such a powerful piece of art is to seek to pour amber and the ambrosia of the gods upon its silk defined skin.

The standalone poem or the valuable collection of verse has always been the supplier of musical inspiration, from every genre there is a fan of rhyming prose and an advocate of the epic stanza and tight dripped couplet, and John Hinshelwood is no different from any other heartfelt soul who wishes to compliment the work and passions of the poet, whether they still breathe in the same time and air as himself, or as he presents in his new album,Called Back (The Poems Of Emily Dickinson), the art of one of the most important figures in American poetry.

In a letter to literary critic and abolitionist, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Ms. Dickinson wrote, “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive?”  In Called Back (The Poems Of Emily Dickinson), not only does John Hinshelwood prove beyond any doubt that the works of Emily Dickinson still hold resonance in an ever changing world, but he does so, with exemplary charm, by promising the listener “To Gather Paradise”.

Poetry by its own definition should not be comfortable, but should challenge the reader, and whilst this collection of musically adapted poems stands firm in that case, it is also beautiful, wonderous, it adds a sense of vivid expression to the delight and often troubled mind in which Ms. Dickinson stood aloft her own distant shoreline.

With a huge array of musicians joining Mr. Hinschelwood on the album, including Tim Black, Cathryn Craig, Jeri Foreman, Ed McGlone, Barbara Nesbitt and James Steele, tracks such as the opener let It Breathe, Beauty and Truth, Hunger, The Return, Goblin Bee, Judgement Day, the superb and perhaps defining To See Her, are framed with undisguised adoration, a sense of esteem to which we should hold poets, the seekers and tellers of a “Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it”, as the example of small things magnified beyond what others can imagine.

Called Back (The Poems Of Emily Dickinson) is that truth, and a wonderous one it is to behold.

Ian D. Hall