Danez Smith homie Chatto £10.99 homie, Danez Smith’s third poetry collection, is not called homie. Instead, a note on the title informs us that the poems – all 38 of them, …
From These Feelings of Futurelessness
Matthew James Holman on two poets imagining the world to come Peter Gizzi Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems Carcanet £14.99 Sean Bonney Our Death Commune Editions $20 Commonly practised in …
To Prime a Palimpsest
Mary Jean Chan on three collections that centre female responses to history and trauma Mimi Khalvati Afterwardness Carcanet £9.99 Jacqueline Saphra Dad, Remember You Are Dead Nine Arches £9.99 Kate Noakes …
How will we cope?
Rishi Dastidar on three collections that offer varied responses in an age of crisis Mark Waldron Sweet, like Rinky-Dink Bloodaxe £9.95 Kei Miller In Nearby Bushes Carcanet £9.99 Richard Osmond Rock, …
At the Borders of Life and Death
Phoebe Clarke on two morally searching, oracular books Ilya Kaminsky Deaf Republic Faber £10.99 Ariana Reines A Sand Book Tin House $24.95 ‘There are exercises in the spiritual sense,’ wrote Paul …
‘My words are buried deep’
Kate Potts reads three collections that focus on reclaimed and reimagined voices Jane Yeh Discipline Carcanet £9.99 Julia Copus Girlhood Faber £14.99 J O Morgan Assurances Cape £10.00 Jane Yeh’s third …
Not a Secret Power
Nisha Ramayya outlines the political stakes in poetry at the intersection of feminism and the occult Francesca Lisette sub rosa: The Book of Metaphysics Boiler House Press £10 MacGillivray The Gaelic …
Forms of Oppression: Nasser Hussain on transatlantic collections that expose violence and the racial imaginary
Roy McFarlane, The Healing Next Time (Nine Arches Press, £9.99) Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin, £9.99) By the time this review is published, it’s …
‘I was one burnt daughter in a genealogy’: Sarah Cave on three collections that offer new, feminist forms of disruption
Rachael Allen, Kingdomland (Faber, £10.99) Sophie Robinson, Rabbit (Boiler House Press, £10) A K Blakemore, Fondue (Offord Road Books, £10) Rachael Allen’s Kingdomland is a dream sequence, nightmarish and visionary, replete with …
To Feel Held by Victoria Adukwei Bulley
Victoria Adukwei Bulley appreciates three debut collections that understand the weight of language Raymond Antrobus The Perseverance Penned in the Margins £9.99 Zaffar Kunial Us Faber £10.99 Sohini Basak we …
An Epidemic of the Heart by A K Blakemore
Three seductive, political first collections Richard Scott Soho Faber £10.99 Abigail Parry Jinx Bloodaxe £9.95 Leah Umansky The Barbarous Century Eyewear £10.99 Sometimes when I feel like punishing myself I …
An ‘I’ For An ‘I’: the vanishing self in lyric poetry by Chrissy Williams
Sophie Collins Who is Mary Sue? Faber £10.99 Oli Hazzard Blotter Carcanet £9.99 Sophie Collins’s début collection Who is Mary Sue? assembles many different types of text – poetry (both …
Salve to Exile: Momtaza Mehri on Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf’s memory work
Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf The Sea-Migrations/Tahriib (Translated by Clare Pollard, with Said Jama Hussein and Maxamed Xasan ‘Alto’) Bloodaxe £12.00 Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf is a contemporary Somali poet who …
Metaphors of the Spirit: Shara McCallum on two Poet Laureates of Jamaica
Mervyn Morris Peelin Orange: Collected Poems Carcanet £14.99 Lorna Goodison Collected Poems Carcanet £14.99 I first encountered poems by Mervyn Morris and Lorna Goodison over twenty years ago, at a …
Mania of Aggregation: Sam Riviere on Ed Atkins’s malignant poetics
Ed Atkins A Primer for Cadavers Fitzcarraldo £12.99 Ed Atkins is known as an artist, not at all as a poet, so he’s not an obvious candidate for the review …
Poetry as Artifact and Historical Testimony: Malika Booker on an emancipating new lyric
Olio Tyehimba Jess Wave $25 Tyehimba Jess’s second collection Olio is a beautiful rendering of minstrel performers post-slavery. Jess and Wave Books have deliberately cultivated a coffee-table art book effect …
The Hatred of Lerner: Caleb Klaces on his struggle with Ben Lerner’s poetics
Ben Lerner The Hatred of Poetry Fitzcarraldo, £9.99 My two-year-old daughter has a frustrating habit of asking for orange juice, then objecting to every way she might drink it. The juice …
Pushing Through to Redemption: Dai George finds poets exceeding the expectations they create
Luke Kennard Cain Penned in the Margins £12.99 Helen Mort No Map Could Show Them Chatto £10.00 In 2006 Luke Kennard held a funeral for irony. Commemorated in ‘A Sure-Fire …
Racism’s Metre and Rhyme: Kayombo Chingonyi on Claudia Rankine
Claudia Rankine Citizen Penguin £9.99 Citizen, Claudia Rankine’s most recent collection, opens in understated fashion: ‘When you are alone and too tired even to turn on any of your devices, …
The Journey to Words: Chris Beckett & Isao Miura on the life’s work of a modern Japanese master
Shuntarō Tanikawa New Selected Poems (translated by William I Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura) Carcanet £12.99 ‘Giving people poems / is like giving people air’ writes Tanikawa in 1991. And this …
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