Precocious [prɪˈkəʊʃəs]. Adjective: (of a child) having developed certain abilities or inclinations at an earlier age than is usual or expected. Precocious is an apt description of young Leeds-born poet Adam Lowe, an award-winning writer, publisher and poet who has received plenty of accolades in his relatively short career, including that of LGBT History Month Read More
The Way Home is Millicent Graham’s second poetry collection following her debut work The Damp in Things, also published by Peepal Tree Press, in June 2009. Although these collections are Graham’s only solo publications, her work has been published in a number of anthologies, the most recent of which being Yonder Awa (comprising of Scottish Read More
I plant a handstand on the edge of human existence tempting mythical beasts to call my bluff, make a scapegoat out of me, or at the very least a media sensation. (‘Let Me Bring You to the Brink’) From the jacket inwards, Priscila Uppal, a Canadian of South Asian descent, fires her mantra for this Read More
Imagine you are interrogating water coercing the hydrogen and oxygen to give up their bonds, give up each other. New York-based poet Philip Fried’s Interrogating Water can be read as an intense critique of the ethics of modern day American warfare, tackling themes of political ambivalence, military torture, weapons and those who wield those forces. Read More
Ihor Pavlyuk’s biography reads somewhat like that of a secret agent. Born in the Ukraine in 1967, he attended the St. Petersburg Military University but left to pursue a literary career before being sentenced to hard labour in the Taiga. He regained his freedom when the Soviet Union fell and went on to become a Read More
D. A. Prince’s work was previously better known to me through her once-regular contributions to the New Statesman’s weekly competition, a minor literary institution and an endless source of humorous invention. I had wondered whether Prince’s published poetry would draw from that same vein of playful humour and subversion, but what I found in these Read More
Any collection containing a piece called “The Best Poem Ever Written” has already thrown away its safety net, its right to complacency under scrutiny. Presenting such a direct challenge to any reader (or, indeed, any writer) slaps down the gauntlet; the work simply must be good. Highly commended for various poetry prizes, Graham Clifford’s reputation Read More
Is this a way through the forest, this path? Is this the way I came? (“The Lake at Dark”) Following in the footsteps of many of his fellow countrymen, Robin Robertson appeared on the Poetry Society Next Generation list in 2004. Since then, he has published five collections, from which this volume is drawn. Love Read More
Although already established as a novelist, Dancing Underwater is Andrew Murray Scott’s debut poetry collection. Published by Cateran Press, the collection’s cover is off-putting aesthetically and although we should not, of course, judge a book by its cover, I must admit that I picked the book up with some reluctance initially. Dancing Underwater had quite Read More
The Merchant of Feathers is Jamaican poet Tanya Shirley’s second full collection, but she has also been anthologised by Kei Miller in New Caribbean Poetry (2007), one of the eight poets “in whose hands the future of Caribbean poetry… [is] secure”. Divided into three sections, the first, “The Alphabet of Shame” delves into childhood memory, Read More