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
Gill McEvoy’s pamphlet The First Telling is a journey through the terror and shock of rape which leads to a rediscovery of strength and of hope. These poems outline the stages of recovery and chart the narrator’s multi-layered emotional development throughout. Primarily, the first three poems are concerned with the narrator’s misplaced guilt and shame, whilst Read More
How did you let him go? With black ink and legalese How did you let him go? It’d be another year before I could vote [.] The first lines of Imagined Sons’ opening poem “A Birthmother’s Catechism” make an uncompromising, direct introduction to Etter’s most recent collection, which explores nearly two decades of pain and Read More
Mesopotamia, Damian Smyth’s most recent poetry collection, is one which perceptively explores and interrogates the notion of war. Inspired by both his own upbringing in Northern Ireland, and by the recent conflicts with the near East, the poet provides poignant and introspective insights into the lives of forgotten casualties. “Mesopotamia” is, of course, the name Read More