‘where and who we are’: two pamphlets

Vietnamese-born writer Ngan Nguyen’s lines (from How Do We Talk About Knives) speaks to some of the underlying and important questions about identity and acceptance explored in these two very different short collections. Published by two vibrant independent Scottish publishers, the quality of the content and the uncompromising editorial and aesthetic standards shine a real beam of light in these difficult times for print collections, times that are in truth never easy anyway for small poetry presses. Bravo to both Red Squirrel and Matecznik for bucking the problematic trend….

I Think We’re Alone Now (Shortlisted, TS Eliot Prize 2023)

A title like ‘The brain of the rat in stereotaxic space’ makes a bold opening gambit. The reviewer is aware the poet has had a past career in toymaking and is soon alert to the intricate care inherent in the constructing of these poems; a planning, an almost archaeologically labelled or museum-catalogued craft. These impressively, formally varied poems is precision-assembled, and there is something in each—be they sonnets, sets of sestets, runes, guitar chords, or even a tightly metrical poem where only one of its 33 lines and title does not end on the name ‘Rosemarie’— which tells of meticulous planning, exacting execution and a mesmerising, unrelentingly creative mind….

Settle

  Theresa Muñoz is well-kent on the Scots literary scene, being published in many fine journals; she writes for both the Scottish Review of Books and the Herald, and her publishing credits reflect a continuing presence in Canada. Close (HappenStance, 2012) introduced her work in pamphlet form; Settle is her first full collection. That title Read More

On Ridgegrove Hill

Increasingly, the passive voice in poetry tends to receive bad press. Some particularly ferocious critics are keen to strike out its very existence in verse. Like most polemics, the rhetoric contains truths and interesting pointers to alert the unwary. Also like most polemics, we might not always want to take such an extreme line. What Read More

Killochries

Killochries has been termed Jim Carruth’s first full collection which is possibly unintentionally misleading. Five chapbooks, an illustrated fable and numerous awards lie between this and his already assured debut Bovine Pastoral. The inside cover’s description of a “verse novella” is considerably more accurate. This is a narrative, yet Killochries is neither quite a single Read More

The Observances (Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Poetry Award)

The Observances of Kate Miller’s debut collection are more than observations, more than watchfulness; they are imbued with an appreciation of ritual, whether human or, in nature, a ritual-like patterning. Such is her acute scrutiny that for much of the time the poet erases herself, willingly passive in a world intensely experienced. The first two Read More