Jane Draycott’s words have always encapsulated a timeless beauty with a charm which is somehow both otherworldly yet unmistakably rooted in our earth. In this her fourth collection of poems, following 2009’s Over, she continues in this vein. “It seems like forever”, she writes in the collection’s titular poem, “We are going to tame the Read More
SJ Fowler’s The Guide To Being Bear Aware is a paradigm for reflecting in a world gone awry. It is a collection with raw, political edge. Wittily, through a play-on-words, The Guide To Being Bear Aware strips the self bare, forcing the reader to acknowledge who they were before the influence of globalization and attendant Read More
it held in its hand, the spirit, a dainty fern of solid gold, as all ferns were before God loved and made them green. (“The spirit crept outside the house at night”) When we think of poetry, we do not think of silence; we think of a page filled, a rhyme uttered or uttered. Yet Read More
This is the work of a life cut short. Ian Abbot died in a 1989 road accident, the year after his debut collection Avoiding the Gods was published. He was only 42. Finishing the Picture, in the words of editor Richie McCaffery, is an attempt to secure the reputation of a poet whose work has, Read More
Thomas McCarthy’s new collection Pandemonium is a war cry. Written post-economic collapse in Ireland (2008), he uses the tools of his trade to rage, amass and, ultimately, heal: (…) let pandemonium Cease, let the wild confetti of poets Be withdrawn from the bitterness of the streets. This passionate, thoughtful collection is at once a response Read More
Jos Smith’s Subterranea is a poetry collection of vivid illustrations for searching imaginations. The poems explore and expand, the intimate space between internal and external landscapes. While it often focuses on specific settings, the collection in its entirety is about the pilgrimage from one reality to another. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the “Subterranean” as both Read More
In a turbulent political world, where the current US administration’s denial of climate change is clear, UK-based Illinois poet Carrie Etter’s Scar seems profoundly relevant. Informed by former government climate change reports, conversations with the Met Office and interviews with her fellow Illinoisans, this single long poem explores the impact that global warming is wreaking Read More
Temples and monuments reach for transcendence, beauty lies in the carcass of an insect, cities within cities, take your eyes from the heavens, look long and deep. These words greet us at the collection’s beginning, encapsulating beautifully the essence of William Letford’s Dirt. In the eyes of many, skywards is not necessarily paired with insects Read More
Roger Francis Langley was a Warwickshire-born poet, as well as a close friend and contemporary of avant-gardist J.H.Prynne. Complete Poems is a summation of his writing spanning a relatively short career – from 1994’s Twelve Poems to his final collection The Face of It, published four years before his death in 2011. His poem, Read More
“The poetic moans of this century have been, for the most part, a banal patina of snobbery, vanity and sophistry: we’re in need of a new prosody[…]” (“Letter on Riots and Doubt”) If, like me, you spend too much of your free time skulking around the darker, meme-ier corners of YouTube, you may have encountered Read More