Poet & Painter: Helen Jagger and Michael Moss
Cornwall for our many visitors is perhaps mainly bucket and spade, surf, ice-cream, and, inevitably, crowds. But what those of us who live here value most are the empty landscapes and seascapes, at their most eloquent in the off season - and these are the subject of this beautiful book.
Michael Moss has a widescreen cinematographer’s eye and excels in the use of colour. He transports us dramati...
11th December 2016
Too Brave to Dream: RS Thomas, Bloodaxe
This is a book of ekphrastic poems by an elderly Welsh clergyman, left between the pages of two treatises on art. An inspiring description? It makes a difference that the artists included Dali, Tanguy, and Magritte and the poems are by RS Thomas. He was a poet known for writing about the harshness o...
11th December 2016
High on Rust: Ray Webber, Tangent
Ray Webber is an anarchic ex-postman from Bristol, an artist, writer, thinker and drinker, who has published his debut collection of poetry at the age of 93.
His poems are generally short and weave...
4th December 2016
The Magnitude of My Sublime Existence, Selima Hill, Bloodaxe
Selima Hill’s readers are fortunate indeed, because she is writing prolifically (four books in the last four years) at the height of her powers. She is funny, tragic, acerbic, brilliant. There is some...
2nd December 2016
Caroline Smith and the poetry book 'that needed to be written'
“I thought this was a book that needed to be written – and that I was in a unique position to write it.” Caroline Smith is the wife of Labour MP Barry Gardiner, and has worked for him in his Brent Nor...
30th November 2016
Umbrellas of Edinburgh anthology, Freight Books
The title of this anthology is either a comment on the weather or, with its echoes of ‘Les Parapluies de Cherbourg’, a veiled nod to “the Auld Alliance”. This landmark anthology contains the work of 7...
28th November 2016
100 Prized Poems: 25 years of the Forward Books, Faber
Twenty-five years ago the first Forward prizes were awarded, going to Thom Gunn (best collection), Simon Armitage (most promising young poet), and Jackie Kay (best single poem). In 1992, as Forward pr...
27th November 2016
Centres of Cataclysm, 50 years of Modern Poetry in Translation, Bloodaxe
Modern Poetry in Translation was founded by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort, went into a splendid second incarnation under David and Helen Constantine, and now continues to flourish edited by Sasha Du...
27th November 2016
Omens and hope in showcase of poetry's young stars at the Troubadour
A wealth of young poetic talent was on show at the Troubadour in London on Monday night in an evening curated by 2016 Eric Gregory award winner Dom Bury, a member of the Coffee-House Poetry team at th...
24th November 2016
What It's Like To Be Alive: Deryn Rees-Jones, Seren
Deryn Rees-Jones is professor of poetry at Liverpool University. After her first degree in English at the University of Wales, Bangor, she completed a PhD in contemporary women’s poetry at Birkbeck Co...
23rd November 2016
MUMB: Cathy Crabb, Flapjack Press
One of civilisation’s best-kept secrets is that the Perfect Parent does not exist, although countless manuals, self-help guides, and people who enjoy occupying moral high grounds would have you believ...
20th November 2016
Pamphlets by Kuli Kohli, Jeff Phelps, Bo Crowder: Offa's Press
Offa’s Press has scored a hat trick - three publications from Kuli Kohli, Jeff Phelps and Bo Crowder that all deserve applause.
Kuli Kohli was born in Uttar Pradesh, India, but has lived in England...
15th November 2016
The Way the Crocodile Taught Me: Katrina Naomi, Seren
Crikey pepper as my grandad used to say (a child-friendly version of Christ Almighty, I believe) – what a story. Katrina Naomi tells us about her fraught childhood and adolescence in a tumble of brill...
9th November 2016
Sunshine: Melissa Lee-Houghton, Penned in the Margins
There’s a received wisdom in modern poetry that says that you use as few words as possible to say as much as possible; a kind of austerity of the word. Every word has to earn its place in the line, ha...
5th November 2016
The public and the personal: reasons why Laura Taylor looks back in anger
Laura Taylor is angry … you can tell that from her T-shirt. But where does her anger come from? You can find more than a few clues in her poem ‘Dear Margaret’, written shortly after the death of form...
1st November 2016
Homecoming: Joanna Ezekiel, Valley Press
Joanna Ezekiel has worked as a teacher, bookseller and librarian; she has had a British Jewish upbringing, and is of Indian Jewish heritage. She is the author of five books of poetry, and Homecoming i...
29th October 2016
154: edited by Helen Eastman, Live Canon
Live Canon publish anthologies and debut collections but they are also an ensemble of actors who perform poetry from memory at theatres, festivals and events throughout the UK and abroad. This latest ...
24th October 2016
Lustful Feminist Killjoys: Anna Percy and Rebecca Audra Smith, Flapjack
These two poets, both with links to Manchester Metropolitan University, are the brains behind Stirred – the feminist collective that runs poetry workshops and performances and works out of the city’s ...
18th October 2016
Measures of Expatriation: Vahni Capildeo, Carcanet
I am usually pretty indifferent to awards culture in this country; poetry prizes for many years seemed to go to the same few names, mainstream and to me frankly rather bland poets who seemed to hog al...
13th October 2016
Peter Riley, Steve Ely, John Foggin, Mark Hinchliffe: Calder Valley Poetry
Ted Hughes would undoubtedly have approved of Calder Valley Poetry, a new small poetry press taking its name from his native West Yorkshire landscape. Its first four beautifully produced pamphlets are...
11th October 2016
Asterism: anthology of punctuation, Laudanum
Asterism, perhaps one of the less well-known forms of punctuation, is used to indicate minor breaks in text, to separate sub-chapters in a book or to call attention to a passage. It is also a pattern ...
9th October 2016
The view from the train: poets deliver a special night on BBC2
There was the perfect excuse for a poetry lover to be a TV couch potato on Saturday night. Congratulations to BBC2 for providing an alternative to the usual fare of The X Factor and Match of the Day –...
7th October 2016
Affectionate, comical, angry, proud: Birmingham poets tell of their city
Those of us who enjoy poetry and spoken word know how the words of a single poet can touch our emotions, make us laugh, put a lump in our throat, or see our everyday surroundings in a different light....
28th September 2016
Four portions of everything on the menu for M'sieur Monet!: Penelope Shuttle, Indigo Dreams
Penelope Shuttle’s first collection, The Orchard Upstairs, was published in 1980 by Oxford Paperbacks. Many collections have followed, along with five novels and the non-fiction books she co-authored ...
26th September 2016
Animal People: Carol Rumens, Seren
The cover of Animal People says “the key to the collection is the sequence ‘On the Spectrum’, which explores what it is to be ‘on the autistic spectrum’…”. This sequence is intended by the poet to be ...
6th September 2016
To Fold the Evening Star: Ian McMillan, Carcanet
Barnsley-born Ian McMillan is an untiring advocate for poetry, as presenter of BBC Radio 3’s weekly programme The Verb. He has been poet-in-residence for English National Opera, The Academy of Urbani...
29th August 2016
The Poems of Basil Bunting: ed. by Don Share, Faber
Firstly, let’s get certain issues out of the way. This is an expensive book, a solid, serious-looking and weighty hardback, not a paperback you could take on the beach or read on the train. It’s inten...
22nd August 2016
Say Something Back: Denise Riley, Picador
Perhaps the most appropriate response to the death of a child remains Lear’s “Howl, howl, howl”. But, if this book is such a howl (and it is), it’s an eloquent, beautiful, intelligent howl, one that g...
15th August 2016
The Immigration Handbook: Caroline Smith, Seren
Caroline Smith’s collection The Immigration Handbook (Seren) is the product of her experiences as an asylum caseworker in the constituency office of a north London Labour MP, and the characters within...
8th August 2016
Mapping the Staffs and Worcs: Emma Purshouse, Linda Nevill
Emma Purshouse is a freelance writer and performance poet. She was born in Wolverhampton but now lives on a narrowboat and enjoys travelling the inland waterways. The Staffs and Worcs is one of her fa...
31st July 2016
Meanwhile, Trees: Mark Waldron, Bloodaxe
The landscape of British poetry has changed in the past decade with more and more work of high quality being published by magazines, small presses and the established publishing houses. These fundamen...
11th July 2016
They Who Saw The Deep: Geraldine Monk, Free Verse Editions/ Parlor Press
A major new collection from Geraldine Monk is something to celebrate. One of the very best British experimental poets writing today, she has produced a book that takes its measure of the sea and histo...
6th July 2016
Pétroleuse: Steph Pike, Flapjack
With the inflammatory title of Pétroleuse and a scarlet stencilled image of the artist against a whitewashed brick wall, there is already ample signposting that this poetry collection is not likely to...
5th July 2016
Collected Poems vol 3: Bill Griffiths, Reality Street
First of all, let’s deal with the figures. This book contains nearly 500 pages of poetry and covers a five-year period. Two other volumes, each equally lengthy, have covered the period from 1966-1991....
24th June 2016
Writing the revolution: ferocity and finesse at Laura Taylor's 'Kaleidoscope' launch
The rights of consumers in the face of despotic big business, women’s freedom to decide what happens to their own bodies, and the liberty to speak your mind without the threat of state censorship were...
17th June 2016
Kaleidoscope: Laura Taylor, Flapjack
Hats off to Flapjack Press for continuing to deliver their mission to explore the synergy between performance and the page. The concept is well tested in Laura Taylor’s debut collection, Kaleidoscope....
15th June 2016
Selected Poems: Talking Zebras open-mic poetry group, Cleckheaton
Cleckheaton was previously only noted for the production of textiles and midget gems; and having its railway station nicked. Until, that is, the arrival of Talking Zebras, a curious mutation from thei...
8th June 2016
The Green Dress Whose Girl is Sleeping: Russell Jones, Freight Books
Russell Jones is a young Edinburgh-based poet who has published three pamphlets and whose recent debut collection, The Green Dress Whose Girl is Sleeping, displays a facility with differing forms, fro...
7th June 2016
Soldiers of the Caribbean: Kat Francois lifts lid on untold stories from the first world war
You might assume that Raising Lazarus, a play by performance poet, actor and comedian Kat Francois about her relative's role in the British West Indies Regiment, had been timed to coincide with the ce...
3rd June 2016
Ice, heat and cicadas: prize-winning poets roam continents at the Troubadour
There was a chance to hear three prizewinning poets at the Troubadour on Monday as Sarah Howe, pictured, Michael Symmons Roberts, and Caitriona O’Reilly took part in What We Should Have Said, a kind o...
29th May 2016
Ocean of difference? American and UK poets read together at the Troubadour
Is there a great divide between Anglo and American poetry? Or are there more similarities than differences? Dangerous territory on which to generalise, of course. But there was a chance at the Troubad...
16th May 2016
Dreaming of Our Better Selves: Marion Tracy, Vanguard Editions
Death and illnesses are central to human life, and the determinedly contemporary approach Marion Tracy brings to this collection is balanced by depth of experience. Tracy began writing poetry as an ad...
10th May 2016
Loop of Jade: Sarah Howe, Chatto
On the cover of this beautifully produced book of poetry we learn of Sarah Howe that she was born in Hong Kong in 1983 to an English father and Chinese mother and moved to England as a child. Thus the...
2nd May 2016
Let's hear it for the Shakespeare 400 Sonnetathon at the British Museum
Liz Berry, pictured, read Shakespeare’s sonnets in her Black Country accent, and took us from the British Museum a little closer to Stratford-on-Avon and the West Midlands. Jo Shapcott described readi...
28th April 2016
Clasp: late modernist poetry in London in the 1970s, Shearsman
London has been a very important centre for experimental, late modernist, avant garde, linguistically innovative, whatever-you-call-it poetries since the 1960s. Not the only place, as a previous volum...
25th April 2016
Mick Yates, Jennifer A McGowan, Abegail Morley (Indigo Dreams)
The books under review here are all published by Indigo Dreams, a Devon-based press which publishes 50 poetry books a year. The press also runs the annual Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize which the...
18th April 2016
'Privileged' poets engage with writers at risk at English PEN festival
The idea was: pair 30 poets with 30 writers at risk from regimes around the world, and commission new work from each of the free writers to draw attention to the plight of those that are not free, or ...
7th April 2016
Memorandum: Vanessa Gebbie, Cultured Llama
What is there still to say in poetry about the first world war? Vanessa Gebbie, a Welsh writer living in England who has won awards for her short stories, flash fiction and poetry, including the 2012 ...
5th April 2016
The Cycle of the Scarecrow: Ian Whiteley, Currock Press
The Cycle of the Scarecrow is Ian Whiteley’s second collection of poems. Born in Wakefield and now living in Wigan, and firmly grounded in the north of England, he explores the back streets of histor...
20th March 2016
Lucky: Graham Buchan, Lapwing Press
As generations of pogrom, Holocaust, and genocide survivors pass away, the message of “never again” trickles away, and humankind seems determined to repeat its mistakes with some gusto. We have an ac...
18th March 2016
Cocktail of sun, sea and Sheffield provides joyous mix at the Troubadour
Mix ingredients from the Caribbean with a pinch or two from Sheffield and Derbyshire. Think of love, death, and a day spent at home instead of going to work. Three poets - Malika Booker, Peter Sansom...
29th February 2016
A Gap in the Rain: Barbara Cumbers, Indigo Dreams
Barbara Cumbers is a poet whose work makes you think of sudden inundations and new landscapes, the slow movement and shape-shifting of continents. Her first full collection, ‘A Gap in the Rain’, (Indi...
18th February 2016
Yesterday's Music Today: Knives, Forks and Spoons Press
This is a wonderfully varied anthology that, like a good compilation tape (remember those?), never settles down into the obvious, and can veer from Billie Holiday to the psychedelia of Gong in the tur...
18th February 2016
Irascible, ill-mannered, worthy but dull? An evening with Wordsworth includes his bad points
“You’ll have to stay another night. The Wordsworth Trust’s running a poetry session in the café tomorrow.” Jane Rousseau – no relation to Jean Jacques – was adamant, even offering to let me stay for f...
17th February 2016
Shall I compare thee to a selfie stick? Dos and don'ts of first-person poetry
Can a poem be considered as a selfie stick? And how much “I” should there be in poetry? These were a couple of key questions considered by poets Fiona Sampson, Tim Liardet, RA Villanueva, and Fiona Mo...
14th February 2016
Small Nuclear Family: Mel Pryor, Eyewear Publishing
Small Nuclear Family is a debut collection. This, too, is the first time that a collection from the excellent Eyewear Publishing has been reviewed on this site. A wrong hereby righted. I love the appe...
4th February 2016
Yarn: Maitreyabandhu, Bloodaxe
I can remember the first Maitreyabandhu poem I ever read. It was in a collection for a competition of winning and shortlisted work. It was about some mules and, though rated as “selected” only, I thou...
31st January 2016
History or Sleep: Robert Sheppard, Shearsman
Robert Sheppard is probably one of the most important poets writing in Britain at the moment. A big claim for a poet you’ve probably never heard of; but I think I can justify it. He is important as a ...
29th January 2016
Not in this World: Tracey Herd, Bloodaxe
Not in this World is an impressively readable collection of poems about loss and pain, where the poet expresses deeply personal ideas and emotions while avoiding self-revelation.
Tracey Herd is a S...
8th January 2016
52: Jo Bell, Nine Arches Press
The idea of the 52 project was brilliantly simple. Jo Bell knows a lot of poets. She was inspired, in a moment of generosity and madness, to set up a “global workshop group” with hundreds of practisin...
1st January 2016
