Reviews
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‘You must live through hell’: On Survivor’s Notebook by Dan O’Brien
Nicola Healey Survivor’s Notebook (Acre, 2023) interrogates the aftermath of Dan O’Brien’s recovery from cancer. A memoiristic sequence of prose poems, it forms a companion to Our Cancers (Acre, 2021; […]
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Paths chosen and unchosen: on ‘Downland’ by Anna Dillon and Jonathan Davidson
David Clarke For those of us who have been following Jonathan Davidson’s work in recent years, each new book has brought with it the prospect of another (often unexpected) push […]
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Breviloquent power: ‘House on the A34’ by Philip Hancock
Richie McCaffery House on the A34, Philip Hancock’s second collection with CB editions, is a book of breviloquent but powerful poems, carefully constructed with a craftsman-like attention to detail about […]
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A Scholar of the Everyday: on ‘Collecting the Data’ by Mat Riches
Christopher Horton Collecting the Data (Red Squirrel Press, 2023) is a pamphlet that decrypts everyday experiences, observing in them both the complex and the sublime as an integral part of […]
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The sound of hope: ‘Before We Go Any Further’ by Tristram Fane Saunders
Kevin Gardner Imbedded in the heart of Before We Go Any Further (Carcanet, 2023) is a wickedly subversive sequence, “Five Songs on a Cruel Instrument”, purporting to contain translations of […]
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Lie down and be counted: on Geoff Hattersley’s ‘Instead of an Alibi’
Dane Holt I discovered Geoff Hattersley in 2019, after reading Wayne Holloway-Smith’s poem ‘Some Waynes’ in an issue of Poetry magazine: ‘a cavalcade of Waynes fucking each other up in […]
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What being human entails: on ‘Say It With Me’ by Vanessa Lampert
Christopher Horton In Say It With Me (Seren, 2023), Vanessa Lampert’s poems, at first, immerse themselves in familial, domestic subject matter before revealing darker themes underlying everyday routine. By way […]
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Beauty before Age: on Seán Street, Michael Vince, & Tony Connor
Kevin Gardner The books reviewed here come from three well established and accomplished poets, whose first collections appeared, respectively, in 1976, 1978, and 1962. Unsurprisingly, all three opt for traditional […]
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Measured economy: ‘Whatever You Do, Just Don’t’ by Matthew Stewart
Matthew Paul Admirers of Matthew Stewart’s first collection, The Knives of Villalejo (Eyewear, 2017), will undoubtedly remember how its intense, tightly compressed poems navigated the overlaps and tensions between memories […]
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A Romantic two centuries late: ‘The Ghost Net’ by Alan Jenkins
Richie McCaffery The Ghost Net is Alan Jenkins’s eighth book-length collection and the first full collection from New Walk Editions, marking a very auspicious new venture for the press which […]
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Memorable mastery: on ‘My Hollywood’ by Boris Dralyuk
Tom Branfoot Anachronism is a stylistic quality that governs translator and poet Boris Dralyuk’s debut collection My Hollywood and Other Poems (Paul Dry Books, 2022). In both form and subject […]
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Kingdoms of Earth and Sea: on Rishi Dastidar, Jane Draycott, and Ruth Padel
Kevin Gardner Three new and seemingly distinct collections by Rishi Dastidar, Jane Draycott, and Ruth Padel join their voices in opposing the kind of exceptionalism that deludes nations and their […]
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Toughness & tenderness: on ‘Crisis Actor’ by Declan Ryan
John Fuller How can we be prepared for all the difficult life-choices we may have to make? It’s a commonplace that there can be no rehearsal for life, since life […]
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Wisdom joined with simplicity: on Andrew Motion’s New & Selected
Patrick Davidson Roberts It’s been twenty-five years since Andrew Motion’s first Selected Poems was published by Faber & Faber and for him personally, and for the world, a lot has […]
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The confessional as poetry’s play within a play: on Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana
Matthew Stewart Deeply personal collections, packed with poems that narrate break-ups and emotional turmoil, tend to encourage the reader to narrow the distance between the poet and the lyrical ‘I’ […]
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On ‘Toys / Tricks / Traps’ by Christopher Reid
Mark Wynne Whilst Christopher Reid has often disguised deeply autobiographical work behind sophisticated role play – the fictional female translator of an Eastern European poet in the extraordinary Katerina Brac […]
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‘Rife with schools of shadow’: on the poetry of James Peake
Lily Searstone Through fragmented visions and memories, James Peake’s second collection, The Star in the Branches (Two Rivers, 2022), seamlessly distils the past, the starkness of […]
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On ‘The Storm in the Piano’ by Christopher James
Neil Elder Christopher James – winner of the 2008 National Poetry Competition and author of several volumes of poetry – remains “criminally underrated”, as Martin Malone once […]
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On ‘Fear of Forks’ by Hilary Menos
Matthew Stewart One of the main reasons for exerting restraint in poetry is to play with what is held back, left unsaid. The portrayal of linguistic and […]
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On ‘Book of Days’ by Phoebe Power
Rob A. Mackenzie Book of Days (Carcanet, 2022) is Phoebe Power’s account of making the ‘Camino’, a pilgrimage from St Jean Pied de Port in France to […]