Citadel is Martha Sprackland’s first full collection, following two previous pamphlets (Glass as Broken Glass in 2017 and Milk Tooth in 2018) and a raft of poetry editing credentials. The slim volume carries fifty poems and has a density to the reading. This stems from the complex premise packed into the work: a historical reimagining Read More
The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes was written in the three months following Lieke Marsman’s diagnosis of a rare form of bone cancer at the age of twenty-seven. But there is nothing hasty or superficial about this slim volume which comprises poetry, letters from Marsman’s friend and translator, the poet Sophie Collin, and an Read More
The children will play with the Sea they will learn addition from the corpses piled on the sidewalks subtraction from decapitated trees[.] Such wounds, remembered even after the page turns and the book ends up on the shelf, are so common in Khoury-Ghata’s work that they shape their own reality, giving the readers a new Read More
It’s a pity Ross Hair’s Avant-Folk is aimed at the academic market-place – pricing it off the bookshelves for most of us – as there’s so much of interest and relevance to Scottish writers and readers. Hair examines the inter-connections and shared sensibilities of poet-artists including Ian Hamilton Finlay, Thomas A. Clark, Lorine Niedecker, Simon Cutts Read More
Eleanor Rees’ latest collection, Blood Child, deals primarily with people and places, with Rees taking great care in establishing tone and atmosphere through skilfully painting romantic landscapes. To me, it seems that Rees’ poetry is much more concerned with creating images and aesthetic appeal rather than an exploration of subject matter or themes. Often the Read More
My first response to And She Was (that’s a Talking Heads’ track) is vindicated by the inclusion of a quote from that very song in the frontispiece – “The world was moving, she was right there with it” – very fitting for this collection’s tone and pace. Sarah Corbett has written a remarkable book, which Read More
Mona Arshi presents her debut collection Small Hands, described as “the slow detonation of grief after her brother’s death.” However, it soon becomes clear that death (and its aftermath) is only one of several themes to emerge from the book. At first, she offers such gems as “My Mother’s Hair” and “The Daughters”. Here she Read More