“People imagine poets are perpetually inspired. This is not true.” This perfectly captures the foundational ideas on which Christodoulos Makris’ second collection, The Architecture of Chance, is built. Described by Rick O’Shea as “one of Ireland’s leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetics”, Makris’ collection examines the nature of chance encounters in contemporary society, and how Read More
…one about to dive in & about to dive in & still about to dive & & &[.] There is an element of this joint collection by Alec Finlay and Ken Cockburn, the road north, which seems to tease the reader into believing Read More
Seren Book’s In Reality: Selected Poems is the first major glimpse of poetry by award winning Luxembourger Jean Portante, translated for English speaking readers. The book gathers selected poems from his major collections, notably In Reality and What Does and What Doesn’t Come to Pass, and provides the original French in parallel with Zoë Skoulding’s Read More
Women like me do not know how to speak. A word remains in their throats like a thorn they choose to swallow. Choose to swallow. In this first translation of her work into English, Syrian-born poet Maram Al-Massri confesses her secrets to us. Al-Massri is a woman stuck. Stuck between Arab tradition and modern femininity. Read More
Con-men, poker-players, poets put the solid world at risk and then enjoy the dance… (“The Water Magician of San Diego”) Elaine Feinstein — poet, novelist, playwright, biographer and translator—has selected poems for The Clinic, Memory from twelve collections written over five decades which, alongside newly-written poems; these do indeed “put the solid world at risk”. Read More
The three collections encapsulated in Love is a place – It wasn’t far away or difficult (2010), The signal is fading (2012) and From where to begin to love again (2014) have been translated from Catalan to English by Anna Crowe, a skilled veteran of poetry in translation. Joan Margarit is an award-winning poet who Read More
Works of literature allow readers to escape to any location in the world and to any era in history, an idea put to work in Geraldine Clarkson’s latest collection, Declare in which she depicts unfamiliar locations in enthralling ways. Clarkson’s aptitude has already been acknowledged: she has won several poetry awards and most notably has Read More
I’m a poet who loves words loves people And believes some things Are worth getting angry about [.] Steve Pottinger, in his own words, is an angry poet. If you like your poetry with a cup of tea and a biscuit, look elsewhere. His latest collection, “more bees bigger bonnets” will shout at you, confront Read More
And the thing about repression is if you dam the waters long enough, when they break get ready for floods. (“Clarification”) Fanning through Paula Varjack’s collection, Letters I Never Sent to You, two features imprint on the brain. The first is a photograph (the only one in the collection) of a clumsy heart mown into Read More
Over the last four decades Valerie Gillies has truly inhabited the Scottish and Irish landscapes; she draws from them a perpetual source of sustenance for her work. “The Cream of the Well” refers to the first sip taken at sunrise that was believed to have healing properties – a mystical quality which has a strong Read More