Hannah Copley,(Liverpool University Press, 2024); pbk £10.99 Hannah Copley’s second collection Lapwing intermeshes avian environments and human emotions, overlaying natural and social ecologies into a bleared landscape of unsustainability and grief. Copley interweaves the relationship between the bird, Lapwing, and his neglected daughter, Peet, with a sequence documenting whole flocks of unidentified birds in ‘SIGHTING’, Read More
Karen McCarthy Woolf(Dialogue Books, 2024); hbk, £20 Infinity is an episode long and troubling to decipher [,] Dolly How might a writer work their way into writing an expansive historical telling of the vastness of United States, uncovering a multitude of people, of oppressions, victories, defeats and ongoing struggles? Recalling the cliché, ‘When Read More
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight(Jonathan Cape, 2024); pbk, £13, Food for the Dead by Charlotte Shevchenko Knight is a hauntingly evocative poetry collection that weaves together Ukrainian history, personal memory, and the deep scars of generational trauma. At the heart of the collection is a powerful timeline of interconnected poems, moving backwards from Kyiv in 2021 to Read More
Sarah Wimbush(Stairwell Books, 2024); pbk, £15.00 300 million years of compression dripping through their hands. (‘Boy Riddlers’) Trade union activists reading Sarah Wimbush’s Strike will recognise those turbulent meetings, the passions, pains, waved placards, and they will know both the lasting comradeship and the perpetual divisions germinated during prolonged strife. They will be Read More
Liam Guilar(Shearsman Books, 2023); pbk £14.95 History is a record of brutalitytempered by outbursts of idealism (‘Maxim 1’) Liam Guilar’s A Man of Heart transforms historical record into contemporary poetry, unearthing narratives of 5th-century Britain by blending reimagination with realism. His compelling sequel to A Presentment of Englishry continues his poetic retelling of the Read More
Sarah James(Verve Poetry Press, 2022); pbk, £10.99 Thoughtful and haunted, Sarah James’s recent poetry collection, Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic was shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award 2023. It is a playful, biting, and introspective look at life with type one diabetes. James’ skilfully employs both conventional and experimental styles, with page layout and lineation Read More
MacGillivrayBloodaxe (2023)Pbk:£14.99 my real marks…I hide beneath my overcoat, trace the seams of its rough-sewn darts: skins shield, sweats salt, but anatomies of sorrow, only death reveals. (Celestial Metre: Wounded Centaur Hexameter) In July 2022, MacGillivray (‘matrilineal Highland pen-name of writer, artist and musician Kirsten Norrie’) interred family ashes in the clan enclave on Read More
Joe Carrick-Varty(Carcanet, 2023); pbk, £11.99 ‘O rain falling on the stillest lake that was all of our futures’ (‘Ode to a Shotgun’) More Sky is Joe Carrick-Varty’s debut poetry collection and the winner of The Irish Times Book of the Year. Carrick-Varty won the New Poets Prize in 2018 and the Eric Gregory Award in Read More
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin(The Gallery Press, 2023); pbk: €11.95 ‘Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person’s life.’ (Eavan Boland, A Journey With Two Maps: Becoming A Woman Poet) This is true of the poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, poet, academic, translator and former Poetry Professor of Ireland now elected to the Read More
Kandace Siobhan Walker is a writer, artist and filmmaker with exceptional creative dexterity. In 2019 Walker won The Guardian’s 4th Estate BAME short story prize. In 2021 she was a recipient of the Eric Gregory Award, winner of The White Review Poet’s Prize, and in 2022, published her debut double pamphlet, Kaleido, in 2022.
Do not be misled by preconceived ideas evoked by the quiet artwork on the cover of this, Walker’s first full collection, Cowboy. Poems shift, build and gather, some driving home their conceit, others ebbing away into the ether. This is not simple in terms of content or of theme either….
