Scottish Review of Books: Stolen from Africa

Given that Rocks grew up in Fife, a black girl surrounded by white faces, and left school with undiagnosed dyslexia, you might expect her poems to be full of alienation, the pain of being an outsider, the suffering of the minority and of the misunderstood. Certainly there are some traces of these things – as there are in most poems – but it’s not what Rocks focuses on. Yes, her poems are personal but they’re not necessarily about her, and that’s what gives them a refreshing feel, their sense of a broader outlook. From the very first poem it’s clear that Rocks never goes for the obvious, never says what people assume she is going to say. In ‘Let’s Hear It For The Orange’, she commends the fruit’s “zesty zing/A friendly smack in the face”, which might make you wonder if she’s referring to the good folk of Fife she grew up with, if it wasn’t that you learn to be wary of drawing such easy parallels in her work.