Claire Askew’s debut collection, This Changes Things, opens with “Dukkha”, a starkly beautiful and shocking poem, at once lyrical and political. It moves from a list of basic human needs – simple shelter, water and food – before escalating to include guns, banks and barbed wire to protect property and resources. It ends chillingly: [….] Read More
What does it mean to be true to the self? How can we come to terms with the atmosphere of our upbringing and with the life force which propels us? These questions seem to set the remit of Paul Deaton’s carefully observed, plain-spoken poetry: “Pushed or pulled the growth of your life?” (“Profusion”). Deaton grew Read More
At a forgotten house I see my mother opening some back pantry door, Her who died forty years later, Remind her who I am. She seems preoccupied, Almost fades out, the scene – a home? – suspended. Perhaps, though, turning, less absorbed, she whispered: ‘Come back when you have died.’ (‘Wild and Wounded’) A Michael Read More
Millicent Borges Accardi’s fourth collection of poetry, Only More So, urges the reader to take a plunge “into frozen water” which abruptly rages into threatening currents. Accardi’s work has appeared in over fifty publications and she has received many literary fellowships, such as the NEA, Fulbright and the California Arts Council. Throughout her work, the Read More
With every journey comes a risk of falling into melancholy – a passing landscape can spark a memory of a person, home, a string of events. These brief glimpses are at the heart of Andrew Taylor’s second poetry collection, March. The collection begins with “The Welsh Hills”: it starts with a bell then the harmonium Read More
Gillian Clarke is a writer with a deep sense of attachment. Born in Cardiff in 1937 and living now in Ceredigion, Clarke held the position of National Poet of Wales from 2008 to 2016. Her newest collection of poetry continues this relationship, but also broadens it: the landscape and the culture of Wales is a Read More
This is Jane McKie’s third collection of poetry. Her first, Morocco Rococo, was published by Cinnamon Press and won the Sundial/SAC Prize for Best First Book in 2007. She then published Garden of Bedsteads in 2011 with Mariscat Press. She is a member of the Shore Poets group and teaches Creative Writing at the University Read More
After Economy is JL Williams’ third slim volume of poetry; it is a haunting collection that explores the world’s impending doom. Progressively, it reads like a human timeline, from the beginning when man first discovered fire to an ending with man becoming leftover cinders. The apocalyptic theme is found throughout the collection, addressing a question Read More
Alice Tarbuck’s first pamphlet collection of poetry, Grid, challenges her collection’s title and bends poetry form. In poems of varying lengths, differing tones and metrics, her writing weaves in and out of twenty-first century human nature – exploring time, emotion, people and places. With such mixed themes the collection is difficult to summarise as a Read More
Aperture – A space through which light passes in an optical or photographic instrument, especially the variable opening by which light enters a camera. (Oxford Dictionaries | English, 2018) In Aperture, Anna Leahy creates apertures through which she envisions and encapsulates – vessels through which a reader may see light. Her collection seeks to peer Read More