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What I Heard on the Last Cassette Player in the World: Ben Ray, Indigo Dreams

Ben Ray’s second collection is a medley of experimental poems alongside absurd, surreal propositions apparently thrown out ad lib, and sincerely felt and expressed meditations on political, environmental and existential themes.

He is a master of the sustained metaphor, as in ‘The day they decimalised the words.’ He plays with the historical event of currency decimalisation in Britain in 1971, s...

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Review

How Time Is In Fields: Jean Atkin, Indigo Dreams

Poet, writer and educator Jean Atkin has worked on a variety of residencies in both England and Scotland and provides workshops and readings to schools, festivals and community organisations. Her poetry has been commissioned for Radio 4, and featured on Best Scottish Poems by the Scottish Poetry Lib...

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Review

The Poetry of Worcestershire anthology, Offa's Press

It is the county of Woodbine Willie, Basil d’Oliveira, apples, pears and plums, a certain kind of sauce, floods, Elgar, and steam trains. Some poets appear a little diffident at first about its appeal...

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Review

The Night I Spoke Irish in Surrey: Richard Hawtree, Dempsey & Windle

Perhaps you need to be as well read as Richard Hawtree to truly appreciate the poetry in his rich, debut pamphlet collection. On the other hand, maybe it doesn’t matter. Most of the poems are inspired...

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Review

Ripening Cherries: ed.by David Bingham and Simon Fletcher, Offa's Press

In recent times, the Japanese art of haiku and its related forms, the tanka and the haibun, have become increasingly popular in poetry circles throughout the UK. Offa’s Press recently played an active...

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Review

City of Departures: Helen Tookey, Carcanet

Helen Tookey teaches creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University. Her debut collection, Missel-Child (Carcanet 2014), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre prize for first full collect...

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Review

Recovery Songs: Ralph Dartford, Valley Press

The cover of this confessional poetry collection has the poet, head bowed, holding a mic. Exposed. Recovery Songs by Ralph Dartford is not an easy read; it is not intended to be.

In an afterword to...

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Review

Momentary Turmoil: Robin Thomas, Cinnamon Press

Robin Thomas writes poems of deceptive simplicity and often vivid visual imagery. He is inspired by paintings from the Renaissance, incidents in war and at sea, jazz musicians, railways and family rel...

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Review

The Blue Tree: Stephen Boyce, Indigo Dreams

Stephen Boyce is an adviser to heritage and arts bodies, a prize-winning poet and the author of two previous collections, Desire Lines (Arrowhead 2010) and The Sisyphus Dog (Worple 2014) and two poetr...

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Review

Docklands: Damian Walford Davies, Seren

Damian Walford Davies has taught in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Cardiff University since 2013. He is now pro-vice chancellor for the university’s college of arts, humanities, and...

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Review

The Big J vs The Big C: Janine Booth, Flapjack

There is a sobering and rather worrying statistic that has emerged from Cancer Research UK since 2015, which is that one in two people will develop cancer at some point in their lives (published in th...

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Review

Anthology of poetry in endangered languages launched by National Poetry Library

Two years ago the National Poetry Library launched an ambitious, global project to track down poetry written in endangered languages, to collect and preserve them. On Saturday the library’s Chris McCa...

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Review

It's goodbye from him ... Julian Jordon hands over baton at Poetry Jam's 10th anniversary

It was the end of an era at Write Out Loud’s Poetry Jam at Marsden jazz festival on Sunday. The ever-popular and energetic Julian Jordon bowed out after a decade of compering the event, and handed ove...

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Review

Baldwin's Catholic Geese: Keith Hutson, Bloodaxe

Keith Hutson is a poet who has emerged to widespread acclaim via a more unconventional route than most. He is a former Coronation Street and comedy writer, whose debut collection, Baldwin’s Catholic G...

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Review

Distance Sweet on my Tongue: Kerry Darbishire, Indigo Dreams

Songwriter and poet Kerry Darbishire lives on a Cumbrian fellside in the Lake District with her artist husband Stephen. Her first poetry collection, A Lift of Wings, was published by Indigo Dreams in ...

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Review

A Map Towards Fluency: Lisa Kelly, Carcanet

Walter Benjamin said that “Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and a textile one, where it is ...

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Review

Humanagerie: ed. by Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley, Eibonvale

The borderland between humans and animals has been a source of fascination for writers down the ages. Think of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, the lycanthropy of Ferdinand in Webster’s The Duchess of Mal...

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Review

Bunty, I Miss You!: Heather Moulson, Dempsey & Windle

Heather Moulson is a spoken word poet like no other. Her poems of adolescent reminiscences catalogue the slights and affronts she received as a teenager, her reality behind the romantic tales of the g...

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Review

In Her Shambles: Elizabeth Parker, Seren

Elizabeth Parker grew up in the Forest of Dean, and currently lives on the harbour in Bristol. She has a BA in English literature and creative writing, and an MA in mythology. She has published a poet...

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Review

Let's hear it as spoken word reclaims the stage: poet launches book on its rebirth

Spoken word is no longer “underground” or “emerging” … if you look at the sweep of history and poetry’s oral tradition , it’s page/written poetry that is the aberration … Kate Tempest draws a bigger a...

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Review

Lunar: Keisha Thompson, Cultureword

Keisha Thompson is known as a poet with a charismatic performance profile and an intellectual passion for maths. Her show Man on the Moon has won the Manchester Theatre award for best studio productio...

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Review

September: Cherry Doyle, Offa's Press

Cherry Doyle, who recently completed a BA in creative writing with the Open University, is one of the co-ordinators of Blakenhall Writers’ Group based in Wolverhampton. Born in Shrewsbury, she now liv...

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Review

LZRD: Alyson Hallet and Penelope Shuttle, Indigo Dreams

LZRD is a title that is notable for its absence of vowels. The human brain, so used to recognising words, quickly fills in the blanks. In the poem of the same name, Lzrd is described as a “squeezer of...

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Review

The Quality of Mersey, edited by Barry Woods

Knowing your place is all the rage these days; just look at the well-deserved success of the current Places of Poetry map. (And if you haven’t already posted a poem or two up there, make sure you do s...

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Review

London Undercurrents: Joolz Sparkes and Hilaire, Holland Park Press

London Undercurrents is the product of five years of in-depth research, part-funded by an Arts Council Grant, by two poets, Joolz Sparkes and Hilaire, into the long-forgotten histories of London’s uns...

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Review

Landings: Richard Williams, Dempsey & Windle

It takes a brave poet to open a collection with two poems that both mention stationery. After all, it’s not at first glance the most poetic of subjects. But then, think of “so many words still to be u...

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Review

Family Likeness: Michael Curtis, Cultured Llama

Michael Curtis grew up in Liverpool, attended Oxford and Sheffield universities, worked in library and cultural services and events management and now lives in Kent. His work has been published widely...

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Review

Many Skies Have Fallen: Maggie Sawkins, Wild Mouse Press

This collection contains lyrical and evocative poems that were written as a response to the death of a young man who drowned in Ireland’s river Shannon. Janusz Jasicki was the partner of the daughter ...

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Review

The music of time: Roger McGough still welcomes us all into poetry's big tent

Time was when Roger McGough was regarded as one of the voices of a new poetry generation. As one of the Liverpool Poets, with Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, he encouraged thousands to have the confide...

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Review

Of Course, the Yellow Cab: Ken Champion, The High Window

Ken Champion is a poet, novelist and critic whose work has been published widely both at home and abroad. His publications include three full collections of poetry, a volume of short stories, two nove...

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Review

Going to bed with the moon: Jenny Hockey, Oversteps

In my copy of Going to bed with the moon Jenny Hockey has written: “Hope you enjoy some of these – a few new faces of death included.” Hockey is a retired sociology professor from Sheffield. Her speci...

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Review

Negative of a Group Photograph: Azita Ghahreman, trans. Maura Dooley, Bloodaxe

This is a rich selection of poems from five books written over the last 40 years by the Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman, and translated into English by Maura Dooley with the help of the filmmaker Ellum S...

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Review

Difficult Women: Nicola Jackson, Indigo Dreams

The absorbing poetry of Nicola Jackson in this collection, which jointly won the 2017 Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize, grips the reader’s attention with its strong commitment to the feminist cause and th...

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Review

Amoretti: Paul AW Sutherland, Dempsey & Windle

It was the title that drew me: Amoretti, the name of a sequence of sonnets written by Edmund Spenser to the woman who would become his second wife. It was published, like so many other sonnet sequence...

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Review

I Meet Myself Returning: John Darwin, Flapjack Press

I first met and heard John Darwin at a Write Out Loud night in Hebden Bridge in 2010, and knew at once that he was an accomplished and interesting poet. Since then he has been the organiser at Write O...

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Review

Counting Backwards: Helen Dunmore, Bloodaxe

It is tempting to reiterate that Helen Dunmore was a poet first and last, both metaphorically and chronologically, but this would be to see prose and poetry as rigidly separate. To me her poetry alway...

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Review

become something frail: Stuart Buck, Selcouth Station Press

Stuart Buck is possessed of an astonishing imagination coupled with an enviable ability to birth fully-formed poems of unique, musical, and mind-bending originality. become something frail is his seco...

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Review

The Soil Never Sleeps: Adam Horovitz, Palewell Press

How much use is a poet down on the farm? Adam Horovitz was invited by the Pasture-led Livestock Association to be their poet in residence for a year, which involved staying on four of their farms – in...

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Review

So the Sky: Valerie Lynch, Dempsey & Windle

Valerie Lynch, who is aged 90, was born in Hertfordshire, but spent many childhood holidays visiting Dorset relatives. Although she has been writing poetry all her life and has had poems published in ...

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Review

Alice in Winterland: Julie Egdell, Smokestack

My favourite version of Lewis Carroll’s best known work, the psychedelic fairytale ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ is not the slightly saccharine (but still endlessly strange) Disney version, nor t...

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Review

Messages Written on Envelope Backs: Ayelet McKenzie, Dempsey & Windle

Ayelet McKenzie has lived in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, for 32 years. She has published two pamphlet collections, and two previous full collections, The Patient is Disappointing and Courting the Asyl...

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Review

Sense Me: Annum Salman, AuthorHouse

A well-informed article recently published by the Guardian discussed poetry’s wind of change over the last few years, and mentioned young poets such as Rupi Kaur, whose bestselling works can be found ...

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Review

Husbands for Breakfast: Trisha Broomfield, Dempsey & Windle

Trisha Broomfield was born in Lincolnshire, grew up in Australia and now lives in Surrey.  As well as poetry, she’s a writer of short stories and unfinished crime novels. Husbands for Breakfast is her...

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Review

Anatomy of a Whale: Matt Barnard, Onslaught Press

Matt Barnard’s Anatomy of a Whale is disarmingly accessible and at times startlingly original. He explores the underside of the ordinary and aspects of the familiar that are best seen by looking sidel...

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Review

The Weather in Normal: Carrie Etter, Seren

Carrie Etter is one of the few writers who, when I hear she has a new book coming out, I get all excited about because I know it’s not going to disappoint. Her last book, Imagined Sons, was a series o...

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Review

This Phantom Breath: Henry Normal, Flapjack

The cover of Henry Normal’s collection The Department of Lost Wishes features a youthful poet in a garish jacket and a huge badge that asks “Are we having fun yet?”. The answer from me is a resounding...

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Review

Blackbird, Bye Bye: Moniza Alvi, Bloodaxe

Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire. After working for many years as a secondary school teacher in London, she is now a freelance writer and tutor, and lives in Wymondham, No...

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Review

The Best of a Bad Situation: Jamie Thrasivoulou, Silhouette Press

In performance Jamie Thrasivoulou has a sten gun delivery. It is the rhythmical bang, bang, bang of the best of ranters’ performance poetry, laying audiences to waste with a voice that is described as...

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Review

Elastic Man: Paul McGrane, Indigo Dreams

Paul McGrane’s debut collection is an enjoyable glimpse into the mind of a man whose tastes, formed in the last decades of the 20th century, will chime with those of many readers today. His title ackn...

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Review

Where the road runs out: Gaia Holmes, Comma Press

Gaia Holmes is a Halifax-based poet and creative writing tutor who has previously made a living as a busker, a cleaner, a gallery attendant, an oral historian, and a lollipop lady. The first section o...

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Review

Five Views of Mount Fuji: Myra Schneider, Fisherrrow Press

Myra Schneider was born in 1936, and grew up in Scotland, London, and Sussex. She has published a number of poetry collections, writes essays and reviews for literary magazines, and has co-edited anth...

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Review

Tutti Frutti: Konstandinos Mahoney, SPM

A skilled observer, Konstandinos Mahoney communicates his enthusiasm for life and language in every poem of Tutti Frutti, his honest, warm and perceptive first collection, which was second prize winne...

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Review

The Wear and Tear of Conversation: Charlotte Harker, Dempsey & Windle

Charlotte Harker’s The Wear and Tear of Conversation is an ironic and humorous account of the interactions between the self and its surroundings. The transgender poet and artist deals with depression ...

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