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Loneliness is a gun The loudest silence in your day dying to meet you The cassettes my dad collected with petrol tokens filled the bedroom I shared with my little brother. His stash were filled with The Pistols, Public Image Limited and the like – he still has the better taste. One of mine had Beethoven’s EroicaContinue reading “Loneliness is a gun – Todd Swift’s The Ministry of Emergency Situations: Selected Poems”

When the British Library published Love Letters: 2000 Years of Romance in 2012, national attention was drawn to 4 letters written by Charlotte Brontë to Professor Constantin Heger. In 1842, Brontë was in Brussels where he tutored her in French. The letters, dated between 1844 and 1845, were perhaps torn up by a shocked and embarrassed familyContinue reading “Chrissie Gittins’ Professor Heger’s Daughter”

A couple more of my reviews of T.S. Eliot prize shortlisted collections have been posted on the Poetry Book Society’s Poetry Portal: Sean O’Brien’s The Beautiful Librarians and Don Paterson’s 40 Sonnets. The Beautiful Librarians is a book for our times: the buildings may be clean but the bonds and the money are dirty –Continue reading “Sean O’Brien’s The Beautiful Librarians & Don Paterson’s 40 Sonnets”

Les Murray’s latest, Waiting for the Past, has been short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Prize. The Poetry Book Society have posted my thoughts on it on their Poetry Portal. To read Waiting for the Past is to enjoy the playful movement of the intellect as it jumps from subject to subject, turning upon a word, or idea. The collectionContinue reading “Les Murray’s Waiting for the Past”

My review of Tim Liardet’s T.S. Eliot Prize short-listed The World Before Snow  is up on The Poetry Book Society’s Poetry Portal. Buy Tim Liardet’s The World Before Snow from The Poetry Society Bookshop. RELATED LINKS Tim Liardet’s website   

The next two of my T S Eliot Prize reviews were posted on the Poetry Book Society’s Poetry Portal today. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been reading Selima Hill’s Jutland and Sarah Howe’s Loop of Jade. Hill wrings disturbing truths from the human heart using Jutland’s restricted palette of language and bold,Continue reading “Selina Hill’s Jutland and Sarah Howe’s Loop of Jade”

The Poetry Book Society has posted the next of my T. S. Eliot Prize reviews on the Poetry Bookshop online. Gasoline fuelled Hollywood glamour collides with the everyday in Tracey Herd’s Not in This World. Herd’s villanelles conjure A-list obsession, and the musicians and actresses of Hollywood’s golden age, from Vivien Leigh to Norma Shearer,Continue reading “Tracey Herd’s Not in This World and the T.S. Eliot Prize”

I was once awoken in the dead of night by the kitchen knives. Not by the cutlery but the other knives. At least, I later attributed the voices to them. More precisely, I was awoken by the sound of my name. The call was quiet and lacked malevolence but, once in the kitchen, I opened the drawerContinue reading “Dream Attack: Fiona Moore’s Night Letter”

Mark Doty‘s latest, Deep Lane, is truly exceptional. Poetry can, of course, be any number of things but some of the stuff I enjoy teeters on the edge of the abyss and, somehow, the poet, the poem, is able to snatch the heat of hell, the salve of heaven from somewhere beyond our plane. DeepContinue reading “Mark Doty’s Deep Lane and the T S Eliot Prize, 2015”

Even today, an assault on the defensive ditches surrounding Maiden Castle would be challenging, their presence serving as a reminder of our darker tendencies. Our underlying savagery, the savagery which made their presence necessary, scars the landscape and in the moan of the wind, the cut of the cold, it’s easy to sense the history of violence. ForContinue reading “Another Brick in the Wall: David Harker’s and Tamar Yoseloff’s Nowheres”