My review of Sarah Westcott's new book, Bloom, has been published on Wild Court. 'The poems in this luminous book, Bloom (Pavilion Press, 2021) are tight, fragmented things, varying in shape and typesetting, in a style both abstract and committed: the world placed firmly underfoot even as the work revels in strangeness and uncertainty. The first poem, … Continue reading Bloom
Category: Review
Tagging The Maze
I've been hugely busy of late with family and work, and the spare moments have seen me working on a new novel. All of this means that I've fallen behind with many things, and that includes posting things on this blog. Here's a recent piece: a personal essay on a poetry collection by Robert Selby, … Continue reading Tagging The Maze
Map of a Plantation
My review of Jenny Mitchell's recent collection Map of a Plantation has now been published on Wild Court. The title of Jenny Mitchell’s follow-up collection to 2019’s Her Lost Language begins with a gesture to objectivity. Map of a Plantation (Indigo Dreams, 2021) – we’re offered a sense of distance, a dispassionate realm of depiction, the chart not the … Continue reading Map of a Plantation
The Political Economy of Tango in the Twenty-First Century by Richard Schwarz
My review of The Political Economy of Tango in the Twenty-First Century appeared in issue 64 of The Journal. Where to start with this collection by Richard Schwarz? Begin with the beginning, then, or at least the title, which is very good in this case. The Political Economy of Tango in the Twenty-First Century: it's both fun and recondite, … Continue reading The Political Economy of Tango in the Twenty-First Century by Richard Schwarz
Bad Idea by Robert Sheppard
My review of Bad Idea appeared in issue 64 of The Journal.When reviewing poetry, you can be forgiven for looking for the open goal, the snagging hook. And so, somewhere in the multiverse, I'm opening my review of Bad Idea with the lines 'What could be worse than a long drawn out process like Brexit? A sonnet … Continue reading Bad Idea by Robert Sheppard
SF Crowsnest Review
Very pleased (not to mention grateful) for the following review of my little science fiction book, Requiem For An Astronaut. 'I liked everything about this [book]. Bart is a perfect narrator with a calm, observant, slightly jaded point of view that doesn’t lapse into cheap cynicism. His style is relaxed and his musings reveal much … Continue reading SF Crowsnest Review
I Never Think Dark Will Come by Susan Jordan
My review of I Never Think Dark Will Come originally appeared in issue 63 of The Journal.Things abound in the first book by Susan Jordan, which takes as its focus the corporeal and tangible. 'Let us praise little things, the use we make of them,' Jordan declares in 'Laudemus' (the Latin for 'let us praise) … Continue reading I Never Think Dark Will Come by Susan Jordan
Operations of Water by Ian Seed
My review of Operations of Water originally appeared in issue 63 of The Journal. There's a famous story about the novelist Saul Bellow when, stuck in a rut with an unfinished novel, an American in Paris, he walked beside the Seine and became inspired by the freedom of the water. This relationship between the written … Continue reading Operations of Water by Ian Seed
Substantial Ghosts by Doreen Hinchcliffe
My review of Substantial Ghosts originally appeared in issue 61 of The Journal.The reader is offered an odd encounter towards the end of Doreen Hinchliffe's Substantial Ghost, her second collection after Dark Italics in 2017. In the poem, 'Twin', Hinchcliffe describes the narrator visiting an apparent twin's bedroom, after fifty years. ('Inseparable, we move and one, each/ Of … Continue reading Substantial Ghosts by Doreen Hinchcliffe
Home Turf by Ann Matthews
My review of Home Turf originally appeared in issue 61 of The Journal. Home Turf by Ann Matthews is, as poetry books go, a pleasing thing: a good cover, well designed, with a nice weight, shape and heft. And the thingness of the book is important, because Matthews's work is offering us a conceptual sense of … Continue reading Home Turf by Ann Matthews
Absence Club 