It would be easiest to describe Anthony Anaxagorou’s debut collection, After the Formalities, as one that deals with Big Issues. Racism, immigration, and trauma all feature large here. Add to this, as per the publisher’s blurb, ‘tracking the male body’, ‘the threat of violence’, and ‘global histories’. These are all appropriate things to write about, Read More
Menna Elfyn was born near Swansea in 1951. She was brought up with the Welsh language at home and in Chapel and raised during a time when teaching Welsh at school was not promoted. Elfyn is a renowned professor of Poetry and Creative Writing, at the University of Wales Trinity St. David’s in Carmarthen, where Read More
Mary Jean Chan has shown that being a celebrated poet with many accolades does not require the publication of a full collection. Chan is noted for her work in anthologies and competitions by many respected organisations such as The National Poetry Competition for which she secured second place in 2017. In the same year, she Read More
The first thing one notices upon picking up Brian Johnstone’s latest poetry collection, Juke Box Jeopardy, is the binding. The pamphlet comes in a brightly coloured sleeve, like a record. It’s a promise that you have picked up something unique, maybe even fun. And Johnstone delivers. As the title and sleeve suggest, this is a Read More
Birmingham based Liz Berry’s most recent offering is a pamphlet of varied and relentlessly honest poems about new motherhood. At times heartbreakingly loving, at others pulling a sideways punch at the world as the new mother, this fierce yet poignant little collection is not afraid to expose the complexity of the experience, including its morally Read More
Reading Lily Blacksell’s poetry is like watching a tragic movie, going to a comedy show and listening to an album of greatest hits on vinyl, all at the same time. This description, from the blurb of Lily Blacksell’s debut pamphlet there’s no such thing, is brilliantly accurate. The British writer, currently based in New York, Read More
From the very first poem in this collection, ‘Object’, I am intrigued. It is an algebraic poem of six lines – a conversation between X and Y and what is implied is that X = Y. It is a bold and quirky start to a collection that asks questions about race, identity and inheritance. Will Read More
Hamish Whyte’s short verses in his third book of poems, Things We Never Knew, are gentle and witty, sometimes laugh-aloud funny, and often poignant. They cover spatial points ranging from Edinburgh and Glasgow to the Australian Outback to South Dakota, and temporal locations as disparate as the present, his childhood, and the year 1876. His Read More
In eager anticipation, I pick up Gerda Stevenson’s second volume of poetry, Quines. Stevenson is a prolific and multi-talented Scottish artist, renowned for her work as an actor, playwright, director, poet and singer-songwriter. This collection, published on International Women’s Day 2018, has been lauded by high-profile commentators, including Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Lesley Riddoch and Read More
When a new poetry collection has gained as much accolade as this second collection by Ishion Hutchinson, we can assume it’s something special. The title seems to refer to both highs and lows in his own life, high and low cultures, from the mythology of the Greeks to the Jamaican classroom of his childhood, and Read More