This review was published last week in London Grip. The poet himself is a gentlemanly presence throughout this, his fifth collection, never more so than when he’s introducing ‘Deliverance, 1961’ the novella-in-thirty-two-cantos which takes up the back half of the book. Like a good-natured aide conducting us to the office of an eccentric royal, he’s […]
Category archives: Review
Single Poem Roundup: Crowson, Crowcroft, Blackstone
Time for another look at three recently published poems, from three different poets in three different journals: ‘Small decrees of dust: A love song with moths’ by Sarah-Jane Crowson, published in Stone Circle Review; ‘The Other Cheek Turn’ by Kate Crowcroft, published in Berlin Lit; and ‘When asked to map the downfall of our relationship’ […]
Single Poem Roundup: Williams, Hovda, Crymble
Let’s look at three recently published poems from three different authors and three different online journals. I’ve picked: ‘Heirloom’ by Phillip Crymble, published in issue 13 of Bad Lilies; ‘How to Tank in Overwatch 2‘ by Sara Hovda, published in Cartridge Lit; and ‘Static’ by Chrissy Williams and Tom Humberstone, published in issue 3 of […]
Still Life With Octopus / Tania Hershman
The poems in Still Life With Octopus slip down very easily — sometimes a little too easily, like they’re elastically escaping their tank. You think you’ve got them in focus, and then they’re gone. Not literally, of course; you can head back to the top of the page and comb them again, looking for the […]
End of a Fantasy: The Panic Behind Literary Reactionism
“Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night “[Contemporary] fiction is about society,” says Clare Pollard, in a short essay asking how writers can respond to the present moment. I wouldn’t have thought this […]
Lyonesse by Penelope Shuttle
Lyonesse (Bloodaxe, 2021) presents a problem. On the one hand, it’s tricky to talk about because I don’t feel able to map out the book’s depths. Parts of it remain sunken and mysterious to me – I can claim no commanding vantage point, despite having browsed it on-off for a couple of months and read […]
On Starlings, with Caleb Parkin and Holly Hopkins
How does a poem mimic (or capture, or transmute) something so visual, so kinetic, so unliterary, as the sight of a murmuration of starlings? And is there any point in it trying to, when we can see the spectacle for ourselves at any time, via a brief internet search? Where is the sense in using […]
THE LIVE ALBUM by Kat Payne Ware
Few collections I’ve read provide – or even attempt – a more satisfying marriage of form and content than THE LIVE ALBUM. Its presiding subject is meat, and in particular meat production and consumption – the queasy horror of flesh being cleaved and compacted, over and over, by rigid, cold machinery. Language, like muscle, is […]
Play Lists by Jessica Mookherjee
At first brush, it’s tempting to classify Play Lists as a document of an era, a window onto another time – the poems are fizzy with teenage love and fashion craze, tentative trespass and intoxication, all set to a pop/glam/alt rock soundtrack that you can access via Spotify. It has bags of atmosphere and a […]