Sounding Grounds is poet, screenwriter and actor Vladimir Lucien’s debut collection. Originally from St. Lucia, Lucien has been previously published in various journals including The Caribbean Review of Books, Wasafiri and Small Axe. His work has also been included in the poetry anthology Beyond Sangre Grande (edited by Cyril Dabydeen), and he has worked as Read More
Carol Rumens, in the Guardian (24 March 2014) reviewed one short poem from this collection and used more words than I have for the whole book. The poem she picked, “Critique of Judgement”, is one of my own favourites because it is deceptively simple, using almost clichéd metaphors and similes but configuring them in a Read More
Sigurður Pálsson is an established poet in his home country of Iceland, having won the Icelandic Literary Prize in 2008. He has built up a considerable reputation in France, which earned him both the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1990, and Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 2007. Read More
Heather Phillipson’s debut collection has been extremely well received, and was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. It is an immediately arresting collection, wherein the poetry crackles with a strange electricity. The volume’s conceit is that it melds high-intellectual thought with domestica, all run through with an erotic undercurrent. This is certainly an Read More
Poetry in translation is not particularly well represented in the UK, but the Arc series of parallel text translations is certainly doing great work to alter this state of affairs. Beautifully produced, interesting publications that profile either single authors or a variety of poets in an anthology, Arc’s series of poetry in translation makes work Read More
On a book tour of his novel about art and war, Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje tells a tale of moral responsibility, an Indian fable of a King who wakes up to find a corpse tied around his neck. Every time the King buries it, and the corpse returns; try as he might to dispose of Read More
Gerrie Fellows is no stranger to poetry, having written four other poetry collections in the past decade. However, having taken a break after Window for a Small Blue Child in 2007, she returns with The Body in Space. Fellows’ new collection explores the poet’s interest in the exploration of human insignificance by its use of Read More
The front cover of James Byrne’s collection, entitled Blood/Sugar, is intriguing and inviting; its rear cover houses two highly supportive testimonials, one by Australian poet John Kinsella, and the other by renowned English poet, Penelope Shuttle, which attest to the perceived riches within. The first impression that Byrne’s work evokes is one of admiration for Read More
Anglo-Breton poet Claire Trévien’s collection The Shipwrecked House is a bewildering yet heart-wrenching composition of myth, life and loss. In returning to the sea as a central theme, the poet creates a seamless transition from her pamphlet Low-Tide Lottery to this, her newest work. At first, these seemingly disjointed poems appear to follow no coherent Read More
Overall, Tom Kelly’s collection titled I Know Their Footsteps is a difficult read – not because the poet uses highly allusive imagery or inflated language but because the poetry is intrinsically emotionally trying. In this seventh collection of Kelly’s (and the sixth of which to be published by Red Squirrel Press), there are poems concerned Read More