[————]: Placeholder

“Carnal”, “emetic”, “wilfully avant-garde”, “dizzying”, “onanistic”, “brave”…. These are but a few of the impressions that ended up scribbled in front of me as I read through [————]: Placeholder, a collection that cherry picks from the 2004-15 work of American poet Rob Halpern. In truth, this collection pummelled me: it pulled me all over the Read More

A Shed for Wood

Picking up Daniel Thomas Moran’s seventh poetry collection, A Shed for Wood, I found the very title intriguing. I wondered at its importance and so turned to the writing itself, intent on discovering the ideas and implications stowed within — its “poetic” meaning, so to speak. What I did discern was that such an approach Read More

Caboodle

For any reader, the familiar offers easy comforts. Finding fresh material can be daunting in the strange avalanche of the new, and perhaps this is also true for poetry. Poets often struggle to be heard, to entrance wary readers and overwhelmed publishers. Caboodle offers a selection of not just two or three poets, but six. Read More

SY StorY

I didn’t want to finish this book. Of course, all poetry should be savoured, not swallowed quickly in large chunks and this collection is indeed quite meaty. Before moving to specifics, I’ll start with some general points. It’s a perplexing title, is it not? These poems take the reader to Stornoway on the Isle of Read More

A Woman Without a Country

The epigraph for Eavan Boland’s latest collection is taken from Virginia Woolf’s essay, Three Guineas – “The outsider will say, ‘in fact, as a woman, I have no country.’”  Boland might herself be, “a woman without a country”, given her peripatetic life, dividing her time between Dublin and California where she is Director of the Read More

Later

Philip Gross’s Later follows his much praised collection Deep Field, and the T.S. Eliot prize-winning The Water Table. Largely inspired by the difficult final years he spent alongside his father, this collection moves through the complex traumas of the failing body, and the creeping uncertainty of the mourning process, towards a tentative interaction with the Read More

Forms of Protest

Forms of Protest is, at first read, quite a bizarre piece of work. However, amongst Hannah Silva’s strange and unconventional writing there is a wealth of inventive and interesting content. Silva’s background in music, including playing the recorder and her experience in theatre, sees her work with sounds and rhetoric in interesting ways. The collection Read More

The Only Reason for Time

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

Epitaphios

Translating poetry is a creative enterprise and, for many, a labour of love. How, then, are we to assess the translated poem? No doubt there is no easy answer to that question, but at least bilingual editions such as this one open up different possibilities. Those with some knowledge of the original language can enjoy Read More

Collected Poems

John Berger is a poet, Art critic, playwright and general European polymath. Collected Poems brings together nearly 60 years of work in one English language volume. Enhancing the start of each discrete section are beautiful, understated monotypes by his son, Yves Berger. The volume examines history, emigration, place and love; collectively it contemplates the impact Read More