Gallop, an overview of Alison Brackenbury’s nearly 40 years of work, is appropriately named for its many poems about horses, but it could also be a gallop through her impressive career. Tonally, though, it’s probably more of a horseback ramble…
Spikenard Yvonne Reddick Smith|Doorstop, £7.50 Dark Matters: new sci-fi poems Russell Jones Tapsalteerie, £5 At the centre of Yvonne Reddick’s beautifully produced chapbook Spikenard is a broken relationship, a sense of loss and a depth of feeling that endures years…
There’s something about this collection, The Games – by a poet previously unknown to me – that is immediately enjoyable, and even fun – without necessarily being able to ‘get’ everything in the poems. Poetry with an air of experiment…
There Will Be No Miracles Here Stephen Sawyer Smokestack Books, £7.99 The Barbarians’ Return Mircea Dinescu Bloodaxe Books, £12 Wade In The Water Tracy K Smith Penguin, £8.99 * -------I who am alive, begin…
Lights, Camera, Stav Poleg Eyewear, £6 Working Class Voodoo Bobby Parker Offord Road Books, £10 The Caught Habits of Language Edited by Rachael Boast, Andy Ching and Nathan Hamilton Donut Press, £15 * See the review as it appeared in the…
Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods Tishani Doshi Bloodaxe, £9.95 Dirty Laundry Deborah Alma Nine Arches, £9.99 Basic Nest Architecture Polly Atkin Seren, £9.99 The three collections reviewed here subvert normative cultural narratives, and engage readers with certain kinds…
From Magma 71, The Film Issue The lens Whether you’ve spent a little or a long time with Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry – chances are that what surfaces when you call it to mind, are some of the things you’ve…
I was drafting this review when the news came that Matthew Sweeney had died on August 5th. I’d like to think of him, poet with a dried sunflower in one buttonhole and a dwarf red tulip in the other (as…
Jo Burns - Circling for Gods (Eyewear), £6 John Challis - The Black Cab (Poetry Salzburg), £6 Hera Lindsay Bird - Pamper Me to Hell & Back (Smith/Doorstop), £7.50 Jo Burns’s debut pamphlet, Circling for Gods, skirts across the seas…
The description ‘compulsive reading’ rarely applies to a poetry collection, no matter how well written, so it’s a welcome surprise to find a book that’s hard to put down until every poem is read. Martina Evans has achieved this with…
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