Published in 2013, the year which saw Michael Symmons Roberts’ Drysalter justly lauded, The Lost Boys bears a warm endorsement from Les Murray. However, Penelope Shuttle’s claim on the cover of the collection that Victoria Field is “that rare avis, the religious poet” rings somewhat hollow. Shuttle is on surer ground with “Place is the Read More
The author of this intimate collection is well-known American feminist poet and essayist Katha Pollitt. Following on from her previous works, The Mind/Body Problem maintains a note of social criticism, although here it is subdued by the more private and urgent theme of nostalgia for things and times passed. Divided into three parts – “The Read More
indwelling is the sixth collection of poems Gillian Allnutt has produced for Bloodaxe. It is a collection of understated beauty: sparse, yet refined and eloquent, yielding the consistent impression of a quiet voice speaking steadfast words. The collection divides into three main parts: “Boxted”, “Stoup”, and “Steppe”. “Boxted” begins with a number of delicately descriptive Read More
In something of a Carter-esque vein, Kirsty Logan’s debut collection of modern fairy tales, The Rental Heart and Other Stories, includes both tales of her own invention and seeks to add new flavour to old stories. Each short story presents the reader with an immersive fantastical world through which they may journey: the land of Read More
Walking the hill country around my Aberdeenshire home, my feet seek tracks to follow, ways that have already been made plain. Animal tracks direct me to water, guide me through a bog, or along the firmest contours of a slope. But the human pathways through the hills are more compelling – the old drove roads, Read More
Jane King’s collection Performance Anxiety draws together poetry from two previous books which were first published in 1993/4, in combination with more recent work. Performance Anxiety is a holistic, well-chosen collection that works around central themes of identity, theatricality and female experience. King’s work has a considerable autobiographical focus. In her 1994 poem “Wash Day”, Read More
The third novel of the Glasgow born and bred novelist and scholar Nick Brookes, Indecent Acts is a book whose characters and themes remain with the reader for a long time, despite an initially challenging quality to both the content and the language of the volume. The book is written entirely in the first person, Read More
Peter Bennet’s Border is one of the most idiosyncratic contemporary poetry collections I have ever read. Uniting poems from his past collections – Goblin Lawn, (T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted in 2007), The Glass Swarm, and The Game of Bear – with new pieces, Border is a substantial work. It is titled most appropriately; borders – between Read More
Bill Manhire is the pre-eminent voice of New Zealand poetry; that country’s first Laureate, and author of over a dozen collections, stretching back to the earliest part of the 1970s. He found some notoriety in his early career when a short poem, “Wingatui”, whose meaning was partially rooted in the vernacular of the New Zealand Read More
Simon Jarvis’ Night Office is a timely reminder of poetry’s capacity for extraordinary reach and intensity. Night Office is a 7000 word, rhymed poem which seems to formally arrange the thoughts and feelings encountered over one night of wakefulness. These referenced prayers, spoken through the night, offer waking consciousness as a form of devotion that Read More