Briar Mouth is the first published collection of poems by Helen Nicholson. She has had poems published in Gutter, and Magma magazines and shortlisted in the Bridport Creative Writing Competition, 2015. She lived near Fort William as a child, spending time in Skye, and now lives in Fife. These locations are clearly reflected in her Read More
From the very first poem in this collection, ‘Object’, I am intrigued. It is an algebraic poem of six lines – a conversation between X and Y and what is implied is that X = Y. It is a bold and quirky start to a collection that asks questions about race, identity and inheritance. Will Read More
Fiona Moore’s The Distal Point is a debut collection that builds on earlier successes: poems from her pamphlets The Only Reason for Time (2013), a Guardian’s Poetry Book of the Year, and Night Letter (2015), shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award, appear alongside new work full of raw emotion and acute observation. ‘The Shirt’, an Read More
Jim C Wilson’s pamphlet, Will I Ever Get To Minsk? packs in poems in a variety of forms, from sonnet and cinquain to triolet and villanelle, and covering a range of material from ekphrastic poems, celebrations of writers, McCaig, Tranter and George Bruce, and poems about childhood experiences. There’s a wit and lightness of Read More
Proudly they stroll in absorbed dignity towards bothlabatsatsi where the sky lightens as if the handsome baratani are drawing up the new day. Peter Jarvis’ first poetry collection, Nights of a Shining Moon opens at dawn in “Aubade”, with a hopeful image of two lovers walking into the sunrise, the persona watching them and listening Read More
If you remember where you were on the 13 November 2015, you are no doubt thankful that you were not in Paris. Paul Stephenson however, was there; in the weeks following he wrote The Days that Followed Paris: 13 November 2015. The formal voice the poet adopts mimics the content of the work which is Read More
Laurna Robertson’s fourth publication, Praise Song, celebrates Shetland, the place of her birth and childhood, and reflects aspects of her early years there in poetic memoir. The pamphlet opens with “North”, in which Robertson sets out the experience of leaving home and family to live in unfamiliar and unsettling surroundings, only to return: your place Read More
The Only Reason for Time, Fiona Moore’s particularly courageous debut, takes the reader through a very honest and insightful depiction of the poet’s agonizing struggle following the death of her beloved husband. Written days after his death, the opening poem “Postcard” marks the early stages of her grief. Thought-provoking comparisons of both colours and textures 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
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