A common thread can make a poetry collection form a cohesive whole from the most diverse of parts. When reading Kerrie O’Brien’s first collection Illuminate, it is clear that the connecting thread is the poet herself. She offers the paradox of a youthful maturity. There are wise insights, creating poetry which is both visually and Read More
In her newest collection, Ghost of the Fisher Cat, Afric McGlinchey has taken poetry to another level. Here, her poems are sequenced into a novella-like arrangement, grouped into sections where she has allowed characters and relationships to develop “[…] across a time-space continuum […]”. The poet fits approximately ten poems of great variety into each Read More
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
Imagine you are interrogating water coercing the hydrogen and oxygen to give up their bonds, give up each other. New York-based poet Philip Fried’s Interrogating Water can be read as an intense critique of the ethics of modern day American warfare, tackling themes of political ambivalence, military torture, weapons and those who wield those forces. Read More