Review by Gary Day of "Sub/urban Legends" by Pam Thompson

Brilliant, disorientating, splendidly polyphonic: these poems provoke, puzzle, baffle and delight the reader. Each one bears re-reading, not least the title poem, ‘Suburban Legend.’ Its zigzags, elisions, and turbo-charged imagery are typical of the volume. Everything is happening at once and at speed. The reader is not sure of their bearings or of what’s happening. Is a cooker being dumped or being used to make a meal? Who are the characters and what is their relation? The man is ‘the scourge of our town’ but there’s clearly more to him than that. The imagery is partly cosmic ‘I identify Venus, lucid tonight’ and partly quotidian ‘just a sponge and soapy water.’ The diction is a heady brew of the earthy, the enigmatic and the arcane. How often do you hear the word ‘brumous,’ meaning foggy or wintery, these days?

‘The Keys’ should be anthologised in any future volume of British twenty-first-century poetry. It is situational, symbolic and finishes with a wonderful shift that makes the poem just soar. ‘My Life as a Bat’ has a mysterious sub-text. Revenge against a former lover? Difficult to say, but it is extremely well wrought and humorous as well as sinister. The image ‘ricocheting in a cave’ conveys both fury and despair. ‘Reading my mother’s diaries’ is one of the most poignant poems in the collection. The last line is just beautiful. 

There is a lot going on in these pages. The search for something beyond the obvious in ‘An afternoon’; the relation of art and life in ‘Fête Galante’; the eerie atmosphere of ‘Explorers, Antarctica,  1901’;  and the soothing blues of ‘the evening garden.’ Throughout there is a sense of broken things that can’t quite be put back together, and the poems invite the reader’s to help join the fragments

About the reviewer

Gary Day is a retired English lecturer. He has had poems published in Vole, Ekstasis, Acumen and The Dawn Treader. His 'Anne Bronte's Grave' was highly commended in last year's Artemesia Poetry Competition.

You can read more about Pam Thompson's Sub/urban Legends on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Amirah Mohiddin of Joanna Nadin’s "Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of 'Yes'"

Joanna Nadin’s Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of 'Yes' is an evocation of coming-of-age in the 1960, following Margaret (later known as Birdy) Arbuthnot on her journey to the secret of living with a capital L. It is a novel filled with vividly rendered, eccentric and true-to-life characters.  

Birdy has always rued her fate of living in Surbiton, a suburb in the Southwest of London, far from the excitement of Soho. She knows there must be so much more to life than retaking the Cambridge entrance exams and being an unpaid receptionist to her father’s dental surgery. Determined to make her life more novel-like, Birdy vows to say 'Yes' to every opportunity and chance that comes her way in the new year. So, when given the chance to move to the heart of London, Birdy ventures forth on a new adventure meeting fantastic and fascinating characters each more vibrant than the last. 

Some of my favourite sentences include: '… I’ll never see Charlie again. And oh! I do so want to see her, to be in her orbit. What a girl— no, a woman, she is! A walking, talking exclamation mark! I am not sure what that makes me. Something innocuous, like a comma, perhaps. At best, a semicolon or rogue apostrophe.' 'And I know, too, that I am an exclamation mark. And that this, all of it, is Life with that capital L.'

The pages of Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of 'Yes' are filled with Birdy’s distinct narrative voice. Nadin captures the voice of a young woman in search of her place in the world in the first few sentences. This voice leaps off the page, almost as if coming to life. Across the novel, we see Birdy going from perceiving herself as 'something innocuous, like a comma' to realising that she, too, is capable of being an exclamation mark. Her journey of striving for independence, growing in confidence and recognising her own worth is beautifully poignant. Birdy’s arc across the novel follows her interactions with the new people she meets: Charlie (later known as Charity), Cal, Rollo, Ted, Val, Aster. Together, they form a found family of sorts, each going through their own transformations thanks to Birdy’s actions as 'Little Miss Fixer.' 

Overall, I really loved the wit, humour and heart packed in the pages of Joanna Nadin’s Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of 'Yes'. It’s a true masterclass in writing a strong, distinctive narrative voice. 

About the reviewer
Amirah Mohiddin is a published short story writer and an educator of Creative Writing. She has recently passed her practice-based PhD reconstructing female storytellers from Arabic Literature in a young adult fantasy novel. Her short stories have been published in magazines, ebooks and physical books, including Dancing Bear Books, Litro Magazine, Post-mortem Press, The New Luciad and Sanroo Publishing. Her novel, Devoured by Stories, is currently represented by agent Leah Pierre of Ladderbird Agency. 

You can read more about Joanna Nadin's Birdy Arbuthnot's Year of 'Yes' on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Penny Walsh of "Moments of Grace: Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry by Scriptorium Writers and Guests," ed. Fiona Linday

This anthology is nicely written and set out, along with the intermittent photographs and art to accompany the works. It is an ideal book if you have only a few minutes to spare a day and want to read something, for each contribution is short. 

I am sure that those who have faith will find something in it for them and enjoy the messages being put forward. 

About the reviewer
Penny Walsh lives in Lincolnshire and is a debut author with her middle-grade children's story Prince Percival's Pesky P.A.N.T.S! of which she has a second instalment manifesting. Penny is also writing a memoir about her journey and battle with severe Endometriosis and IVF, the prologue of which was published in two anthologies Venus Rising and Good Girl, Bad Period.  She has had articles published on Medium.com, was commissioned to write a poem for a local event, and has had a short story published in the anthologies Family Matters and Making Our World Better (both of which were part of the University of Leicester's Attenborough Arts). 

Review by Harry Whitehead of "Syllables of the Briny World" by Georgina Key

Georgina Key’s Syllables of the Briny World offers a poignant and vivid magical realist evocation of Hurricane Ike’s devastating rout of the Texas coastline in 2008. But the book is about more than simply the catastrophe that claimed nearly two hundred lives. It is a novel about relationships. 

Pete is an alcoholic, washed-up fisherman incapable of straightening out for long enough even to spend time with his children, his divorced wife having given up on him long ago. Izzie is eighteen, struggling to come to terms with her queer identity, an unsympathetic mother making her life miserable as she traverses the complexities of her first relationships. Agnes and Earle are retired, upright pillars of religious and moral fortitude. Clementine and her friend Dorie both lost children and are struggling to emerge from grief alongside fallible, if well-meaning, men. And Clementine can see the dead. After her boy, Finn, drowned, she wandered the shoreline trying to reclaim him from the Sea-Mother, hearing his lost voice in the wind and the waves. Now, just as the storm approaches, she sees a ‘Lost Boy’ on the beach, who leads her to her son. No one, least of all her husband, believes her. The Lost Boys, meanwhile, have their own agenda.

The novel gently charts the resilience of the people who inhabit the thin strips of land along the Gulf of (yes!) Mexico, land destined ultimately to be reclaimed by the sea. An environmental novel, then, certainly. But its green credentials are ever-so-delicately woven through the gripping interplay of the various characters' lives. We witness both tragedy and hope unfold amid the ferocious drama of the real events of Hurricane Ike. Highly recommended.

About the reviewer
Harry Whitehead is a novelist and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Leicester where he directs the annual free literature festival, Literary Leicester. His new environmental thriller, White Road, is out in September from Claret Press.

Review by Rennie Parker of "Saltburn" by Drew Gummerson

Drew Gummerson is evidently a writer from the "more is more" school of creativity, like a speeded-up Dickens with additional body-parts. If the phrase can be made more inclusive, with ideas springing off from ideas like a hi-energy trampoline school, you can bet this author will be on it. For example, he need not say that the University holds its Innovation Fair in the "hired-out" waiting room of the railway terminus, for the simple reason that it must be hired out if it is normally the waiting room, but does it matter? No, because the story rushes on to the next gleaming sentence and the hired-outness serves to illustrate how triple-layered everything is in Saltburn-world. 

Everyone here is on the make. If it moves, you sell it or hire it, because otherwise someone will be selling or hiring you instead. And underneath the relentless bonhomie there's a current of barely suppressed rage at how society has turned out. For example, there's a boardgame comes with "bonus points for disposing of homeless people or setting fire to food banks," although the game itself is based on the 1970s hit "Mousetrap," judging from the description. So it's something nostalgic and sweet, followed by something that kicks you where it hurts; Gummerson knows how to deal both sides of the coin. And he's not bothered whether you find his characters pleasant or not - the somewhat off-colour second son of the glove manufacturer is the sort of person who'd be best avoided on the train, and his eventual paramour Captain Nemo could have done better, methinks.

I loved the evocation of a rundown seaside environment, because we've all been to a version of these places, most likely on a budget childhood holiday. It's the world of McGill postcards garnished with Gillray sentiments, and it's resolutely set in the past, no doubt to encourage our belief in some of the magical-realist events and allegories. If the pricing is judged around the newly decimalised coinage in 1972-73 and all the older ladies look about as appealing as Ena Sharples, it's not so surprising to find a mermaid at work in the penny arcade and to discover that the local nuclear reactor is powered by ex-pit ponies. It's safely in the past, where anything can happen. Sometimes, I feel the author writes things just because he can (for example, his intonation shifts unexpectedly into a hardboiled American phase at one point) and maybe there's an added homage to one of his literary heroes. I'm enjoying the ride, but I would like to see what happens when Gummerson harnesses his writing elan to something where he isn't burning through his subject matter at such speed.

However, don't do what I did and return to the book after a few days away. I've got too many questions. Why is this character collecting underpants? Why is Sven called Sven? Have I missed something? Why does everyone have a Binatone TV? And even though the New Puritan Party attempts to ruin everyone's lives, even if your guesthouse is nightly paraded-past by convicted penitents on their knees, there still might be too many bums and willies for some readers. I suspect I'm not the ideal reader Gummerson was thinking of when he wrote -  or rather, ran gleefully after - this book. The imagination behind this must look like Dinsdale's Joke Shop in the Hepworth Arcade in Hull. I've never read anything like it. And you won't either, which is why you should hie down swiftly to the nearest not-mega-retail-outlet and book an excursion to this most unusual resort. But don't be fooled by the cartoon framing, and be aware that some of the images might be close to the bone.

About the reviewer
Rennie Parker is a poet living in the East Midlands, and she is mostly published by Shoestring Press. Her latest collection Balloons and Stripey Trousers, a nightmare journey into the toxic workplace, came out earlier this year. She works in FE and blogs occasionally here. She is also on Twitter/X and Bluesky.

You can read more about Saltburn by Drew Gummerson on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "Wild Boar" by Hannah Lutz, trans. Andy Turner

Ritve is looking for wild boar.

Glenn is looking for happiness.

Mia is looking after her grandfather who is suffering from Alzheimer’s.

All are living by the forests of Småland in Sweden.

The forests of this Småland are home to a growing population of wild boar that were once on the verge of extinction. Ritve is searching for them, but never seems to have any success in finding them. He sees their destructive nature and chases sightings, but to no avail. Why is something so plentiful continuously out of his reach, but seen by so many others?  

Mia wants her grandfather to remember his past, but continually fails even though she has brought him back to his childhood home. Her love and devotion towards him are clear, but it makes no difference. Age has taken its toll and it can never be reversed.

Glenn is an ordinary man with simple ideas and tastes who just want to be happy. He has found his love and his true nature. But will it be enough? His job is only a means to an end. He does not relish it, but he does seem to welcome life and wants to get more from his surroundings and relationships.

Wild Boar is narrated by three very different characters who have come from afar to the isolated community of Småland.

Wild Boar is a poetic masterpiece about animals and people and their different places in a destructively changing ecosystem. The denouement of the book is tragic and compelling as we are shown than none of us can escape the world in which we live. It will take its toll.

Written beautifully, and translated with what we can only assume is infinite care, Wild Boar looks at our past and our future, the planet's past and future and, in the end, it doesn’t appear to hold out much hope for our future.

About the reviewer
Jonathan Wilkins is 69. He is married to the gorgeous Annie with two wonderful sons. He was a teacher for twenty years, a Waterstones’ bookseller and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. Nowadays he takes notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester and Warwick Universities. He has had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. He has had poems in magazines and anthologies, art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station. He loves writing poetry. For his MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. He followed it up with Utrecht Rain, and is now writing a third part. He is currently writing a crime series, Poppy Knows Best, set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s.

You can read more about Wild Boar by Hannah Lutz on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Colin Dardis of "Boy, Mother" by Caroline Bracken

Winner of the 2024 Poetry Business International Book & Pamphlet Prize, Boy, Mother is a sequence of poems exploring a mother’s relationship with her son, who has a long-term mental illness. However, this is not just the typical unconditional familial love of devotion and sacrifice. Rather, Bracken displays the interplay being the wellbeing of mother and son, as set up in the opening poem, "Amor Matris": "Some / children / are easy / to raise … // Some / mothers / are easy to love," going on to give the exceptions of herself and son. We see this uneasy symbiotic relationship throughout the work: "he gains ten pounds    you lose ten," "both he and you will be judged," "I carried him under my skin for 293 days safe in amniotic fluid." The mental wellbeing of one is wholly reliant on the other: the mother to know that the son is safe and well, and the son to have his mother fight on his behalf for access to care and the safety of home.

"Admissions" catches the interminable horror of hospital waiting rooms with wry observations: "greasy Hello magazines show Princess Diana alive … a half-full water cooler   no cups." We find similar trivialities in "Black Coat," where the mother frets over the suitability of a coat to be worn to her son’s possibly impending funeral. The mind goes to curious places in times of stress, but to hint at such whimsy in times of suffering without underplaying the suffering itself is remarkable writing, reminiscent of David Sedaris or Henry Rollins.

A number of poems are set in admission areas, anonymous waiting rooms, even police stations, Bracken expertly capturing both the clinical boredom of inactivity and the uneasy anticipation of bad news. Constantly, we are reminded of the mother’s helplessness, her sanity at the whim of a medical examination or a police search.

          A stranger will tell me
          he is either dead or found
          I have rehearsed both
          during six weeks
          of fluid dread
          ("Ballast")

Where these poems excel is that, although obviously written after the event, the reader feels right alongside the mother as she waits for the news, any news, sharing her concern and her fears. "Eyewitness" and "Mental Health Act" dissect and distil each action and thought slowly, drawing out the gamut of feelings and sensations, allowing space for the reader to enter the thought process.

Judge of the Poetry Business prize Jane Clarke, in her blurb for the collection, notes the collection's "innovative poems," although there is little that could be considered as breaking new poetical ground. Bracken prefers extra spacing between words or line breaks to do the work of commas and semi-colons; at times, punctuation is dispensed of altogether, causing a double-take in the reading of some lines that could have benefited from clearer intervals. To be generous, such form could be said to be representative of the frantic minds of both mother and son, where in the moment, thoughts and expressions are not precisely and neatly expressed, but tumble out in a cacophony of worry or illness. However, at times, the omission inhibits rather than elevates the writing.

The collection’s closing poems shift away from the turbulence and trials of disappearances and medical interventions to something more akin to normalcy: a shared coffee in a cafe, a trip to Marks and Spencers, the mother showing her son how to construct his hair into a man-bun. All of these little events are shown to be hard won, even fraught – "your leg shaking my hand shredding napkins," or the marvelling of the son successfully navigating a self-check out with ease by the overly-anxious mother – but come as blessed reprieve after the early tribulations.

Admittedly, this reviewer is not a parent, so outside of these poems, it would be hard to imagine the natural concerns and heartache that a mother or father may go through with a child. However, it is testament to the willingness of Bracken to be open and shame-free in sharing her concerns that Boy, Mother makes it a little easier for this reviewer to envisage such. Overall, this is another fine collection reflective of the usual high standard from the Poetry Business, and one to be sought out by all.

About the reviewer
Colin Dardis is the author of six poetry collections and four pamphlets, most recently with the lakes (above/ground press, 2023) and What We Look Like in the Future (Red Wolf Editions, 2023). A neurodivergent poet, editor and sound artist, Colin is co-host of the long-running open mic night, Purely Poetry, held in the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, and editor of the poetry blog, Poem Alone.

Review by Gary Day of "Nothing Louche or Bohemian" by Tina Cole and Michael W. Thomas

It’s an interesting title. One that turns its back on the sordid and the unconventional but what does its face toward? The answer is local social history. This is very much a volume of people and places that the authors have known. 

Tina Cole and Michael Thomas are too experienced to fall prey to nostalgia or sentimentality. Instead  we are treated to a series of poems that are clear-eyed, gritty and authentic. Cole's "Intoxication" acknowledges the continuing lure of the artistic world while being wise enough to know that poetry only flourishes if it remains close to its roots. Thomas achieves a similar effect in "Sally Riordan." 

Both poems exemplify how each poet riffs off each other. The result is a beautifully textured collection, full of vivid evocations of characters, scenery and a vanished way of life. An example is Thomas’ "Unmapped." A once well-known landscape has become strange to itself and those who used to walk its ways. Memory is in danger of disappearing. The language of the poem is representative of the volume in its precision and invention: "tree-tops net the seasons / in stars of summer blood / and Christmas pearl." Cole’s "Local Vagrant: Dudley 1960s" is equally arresting, the subject's frailness brilliantly and economically conveyed by the phrase "knitted shoulders" while his position on "the ledge of what is now and what / was then" could serve as an epithet for the entire selection. 

There’s an element of Lennon and McCartney in the poems of Cole and Thomas; the same eye for the telling detail and a feeling for the oddness of the ordinary. There are also strains of lyricism but these are kept in check and are felt all the more poignantly for that. The fusion of personal life and social history makes this an unmissable read.

About the reviewer
Gary Day is a retired English lecturer. He has had poems published in Vole, Ekstasis, Acumen and The Dawn Treader. His "Anne Bronte's Grave" was highly commended in last year's Artemesia Poetry Competition. 

You can read more about Nothing Louche or Bohemian by Tina Cole and Michael W. Thomas on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Claire Cox of "Dear Life" by Shanta Acharya

As Maggie Nelson writes in On Freedom: ‘The question is not whether we are enmeshed, but how we negotiate, suffer and dance with that enmeshment.’ The conundrum of how best to live a life bounded by deep pain on one side and soaring rapture on the other lies at the heart of Shanta Acharya’s latest collection Dear Life. From its beguiling front cover – a ghostly blossom, ambiguously emerging or receding in the gloom – this collection grapples with archetypal concerns of light, darkness and exquisite beauty. The author’s elevated yet earthly contemplations on mortality loom large from the first poem ‘Being Alive,’ with its description of undiagnosed disease and resultant physical and spiritual pain, to the final eponymous poem ‘Dear Life,’ in which the struggles and wonders of living are said to exist within the independent agency of the author’s own words. 

Unafraid to explore the inevitable elements of suffering we encounter almost daily, Acharya probes the lived realities of solitude, grief, heartache and dislocation with startling imagery. Physical, emotional and spiritual sensations in ‘Loneliness’ are likened to ‘menacing lions,’ ‘blister packs of agony’ or a ‘professional assassin.’ The devasting loss of her brother, Susanta Acharya, forms a complete section of its own. Here, the terrible storm that overtakes us as we accompany a loved one through their final days – the assault on belief, grief’s uncertainty and the arbitrariness of loss, are articulated with aching self-awareness. Yet, even in such a raw, depleted state Acharya's imagination and luminescent cosmology enable these poems to vibrate with a wonderment for life. The omnipresence of love, divine and familial, is fixed as the ultimate universal truth despite the difficulties of holding on to that faith in the most testing of times; times that give rise to the hardest questions:  

          … Is life a series of random outcomes?
         And we humans here merely to add meaning?

         If there’s a force for truth and justice, enlighten me
         so I may make sense of this unbearable darkness of being? 

However, in this paradigm of mortality’s most profound challenges, Acharya is not without wit and effervescence. ‘Dressing Up In Lockdown’ is a sumptuous reminder of the beauty of levity. A celebration of incandescent bounty, revelling in for-best saris, jewellery and perfume, this sonnet radiates joyous indulgence and acts as a shimmering bubble, glistening and fragile in the face of enforced isolation. This sonnet is also an example of the impressive level of formal awareness that is evident throughout the collection. In addition to being one of several sonnets in Dear Life (indeed the second section of the collection is composed entirely of six sonnets), ‘Dressing Up In Lockdown’ shows examples of the particularly deft use of enjambment that serves to propel the writing and add a frisson of revelation at line-break level. Examples here include: ‘lounging / in pyjama and dressing gown,’ ‘of not being / touched’ and ‘Unable to ignore their / pleas.’ As a technique, enjambment is used to great effect not only across the collection’s line breaks but also operates across stanza breaks with confidence and panache. This from the couplets of ‘Afterwordsness’: 

          … Setting up
          home beyond the seven seas, building bridges in space 

          and time, I keep an open house, furnish it with song – 
          invisible guests come in and out it will.

Also of note is the collection’s use of repetition, most evidently in the extensive use of the ghazal. As a form traditionally associated with the expression of physical and spiritual love and longing, it is a particularly apt vessel for the thematic ruminations that run through this collection. The ghazal, with its repeated end word or phrase, enables a multi-faceted exploration of key philosophical considerations. Looking at some of the ghazals’ titles, which also serve as the repeated end word - ‘Secrets,’ ‘Find Me,’ ‘Existed,’ ‘Change,’ ‘Solitude’ and ‘Exile’ - gives a sense of the collection’s underpinning concerns. In a formal development, the poem ‘If’ also uses anaphora’s repetition at the start of each three-line stanza, in addition to epistrophe at the end of each tercet, which repeats the phrase ‘we would not exist.’ The regularity of this pattern throws into high relief its sole variation, that of the last tercet, which creates an abrupt and portentous shift:

          If greed and ignorance, pride and power
          stand in the path of enlightenment and realisation– 
          we will cease to exist. 

Again, in ‘Grant Us’ the repetition of the phrase ‘Grant us the wisdom’ at the start of each four-line stanza enhances the earnest prayerfulness of this poem and serves to illustrate the interrelationship between theme and form that is so intricately crafted across this collection.  

At its strongest when engaging with the nuance and possibilities of the lyric voice, Dear Life also includes empathetic forays into adopted persona and accounts of parallel experiences. In ‘Allepo, My Allepo!’ it is the beleaguered city that speaks. In ‘She Remembers,’ Hindu epics are revisited; ‘The Tree Huggers’ narrates a bloody incident in Indian history. Culturally eclectic, spiritually profound, this collection is equally adept at drawing on Catholic, Islamic, and Hindu traditions as well as classical mythology and Greek tragedy. The result is a deeply textured, deeply considered, and deeply felt exploration of and for humanity. Perhaps the most enduring truth within this expansive yet intimate collection lies in the poem ‘We Are All Returning.’ Written in memory of the author’s brother, it resonates powerfully in its universality: 

           The most revolutionary thing one can do in the worst 
           of times is to live and love to the best of one’s ability. 

Here is wisdom, hard won and transcendent.

About the reviewer
Claire Cox is co-founder and Associate Editor of ignitionpress, winner of the 2021 Michael Marks Publishers’ Award. She has a PhD (Royal Holloway) on poetry and disaster. Her poems have appeared in Primers: Volume Five and other magazines and anthologies. Claire was also the winner of the 2020 Wigtown Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize.