Bandit Country (Shortlisted, TS Eliot Prize)

James Connor Patterson’s first collection, Bandit Country, begins with an epigraph from Douglas Dunn which expresses a desire to ‘become a landmark’. In a sense, this too is Paterson’s aim, in his inventive collection of poems that bring voice to Northern Ireland’s ‘ceasefire generation’.

The collection displays a complexity of the language(s) employed, the rhythmic vernaculars of Ulster Scots, the cadence of the Northern Irish phraseology, and an English language heavily peppered with literary referencing; they all combine, pluralistic and porous, blending from one to the next, stitching different tongues together and showing, to use Dunn’s words again, what it is to be ‘an example of being part of a place.’

All the Names Given (Shortlisted, TS Eliot Prize, 2021)

Writing that is enquiring, taking very little for granted, and making space for readers is always a joy to behold.  All the Names Given has these virtues in spades, posing some searing questions not only about the nature of ancestry, family, identity, colonial legacies, racism, how and where we fit within a larger social world, but what these mean for the living?

The Tradition

Jericho Brown’s The Tradition is a sharp shock of a book. Daring and lyrical, this collection examines issues of identity, race and sexuality, all set in the backdrop of modern American society. Brown’s defiant ‘I’ provides an anchor for this collection, grounding it with a deep sense of intimacy.

The M Pages

The M Pages opens with ‘Death of an Actress’, a poem layered with literary references, and heavy with a clever litany of clichés, both witty and poignant. That wit is intrinsic to these poems. Throughout tragic, shocking and sombre passages, Bryce’s fun with wordplay, and her tumbling rhyme never diminish, akin to the irreverent gallows humour which needfully so often accompanies mourning.

How the Hell are You

It is not the question of How the Hell are You, but rather the question of who the hell were we (‘How The Hell Are You.’) that encapsulates Glyn Maxwell’s most recent poetry collection of the same title. Maxwell has won many awards for his poetry and has been previously shortlisted twice for the TS Read More

The Mizzy (Shortlisted, 2019 TS Eliot Poetry Prize)

‘All I’ve ever done with my life is follow the average course’ (The Starling) How bold of Paul Farley to open his recent poetry collection, The Mizzy, with such a provocative admission to have followed the ordinary or ‘average course’? Yet, Farley is anything but average or conventional, and throughout this latest collection, the profound Read More

The Caiplie Caves (Shortlisted, 2019 TS Eliot Prize)

This is Canadian-born Karen Solie’s fifth full collection and it is a strange and wonderful read, taking two outwardly unappealing themes of loneliness and indecision and exploring them fully through the eyes of the seventh-century Scottish saint St Ethernan.  The titular ‘Caiplie Caves’ were the dwelling place of said saint on the sleepy Fife coast, Read More

EUROPA (Shortlisted, TS Eliot Prize)

‘You Are Now Entering Europa’, the opening poem in this, Sean O’Brien’s ninth collection, derives its title from a Lars von Trier film. In the film prologue, the voice of Max von Sydow primes the listener, ‘On the count of 1 to 10, you will be in Europa’, and as he descends the numbers, we Read More

THE LONG TAKE (or A Way to Lose More Slowly)

cos cheum nach gabh tilleadh For some, Robin Robertson’s book-length narrative poem is “unclassifiable”. Shortlisted for awards invariably dominated by prose, it is epic in both scale and ambition. Resisting the strict fit of epic form, its protagonist (the aptly-named Walker) is overly human for deification; its netherworld trips, earthly hells. Remembered paradises are also Read More