Review by Lauren M Foster of "A Marginal Sea" by Zoë Skoulding

What comes to mind, as I read Zoë Skoulding’s A Marginal Sea, is sound - be it birdsong, waves, language, empty space. Sound holds as equal a weight as meaning in this collection.

For me, there are several poems which stand out, the first of which is "A Short Presentation on the Current Direction of Travel." I feel like I am on a small boat out in the middle of the Menai Straits, that narrow stretch of water between North Wales and Anglesey which the collection’s title refers to, as I listen to the undulating rhythms of the boat’s engine as it rides the waves. Whether that is the intention I don’t know, but it’s where it takes me. There is a strong sense of the present in this poem. It is hypnotic, Zen-like, in its mantra, and this strange poem has stayed in my memory with a surprising clarity.

          we are where we are we are where we are we are where
          we are we are where we are we are where we are we are

In "A Rose for Rosa," I feel the poet is seeking Rosa Luxembourg in places and streets around the world named after her. The revolutionary spirit in this poem is fierce. I recall Luxembourg disappeared. Her body was never found and the authorities claimed she had committed suicide by drowning but no evidence of that ever came to light: "... it wasn’t rosa luxemburg who lit up the roza luksemburg electric lamp factory in warsaw she is not in the jardins rosa luxemburg in paris or the jardins de rosa luxemburg in barcelona where although you may find roses you will not find her it’s no use looking..."

I loved the sequence "Adar Môn Birds of Anglesey," especially the translation of a bird call utilizing symbols as well as letters in "Telor Yr Helyg Willow Warbler Phylloscopus Trochilus": ">>>//::: fitis // >>::  >>/>>piecuszek >>// >>"

Imagery is strong too, such as in "Newborough Warren with Map of Havana": 

           an apparition of ponies
           shimmers into something you’d believe in
           their furious hunger
           teeth locked on tufts of dune grass
           while underground the rabbits
           hollow out the dark

And earlier, in the same poem, sound again, and an eco-poetic consciousness:

          a marsh harrier turns
          overhead the far off drone of planes
          the warmth is wrong it should be raining
          in another language lluvia

A Marginal Sea is an unusual, absorbing collection with subtle insights of the world around us but it also reaches unfathomable depths. Is it a coincidence I use imagery of the sea to convey what the work gives me? I don’t think I have read a collection quite like this. It is startling and stands on its own of all the works I have read.

Some poems have almost avant-garde post-punk sensibilities and it was no surprise to learn Skoulding is also a bass player. I think her musical practice shines through in the poems. I would love to hear these pieces in a performative context. Skoulding comes across as a poet who listens more than anything, not only to the sounds around her, but for shifts in society, and for meaning.

About the reviewer
Lauren M Foster is a graduate of the MA Creative Writing at University of Leicester. Her work has been published in Ink Pantry, Leicester Literary Review, The Journal, The Wombwell Rainbow, The Sirens Call and more. She was Poet in Residence on The Kindness Project, 2023, and is a drummer/vocalist/lyricist in The Cars that Ate Paris.

You can read more about A Marginal Sea on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Lauren M Foster of "Terminarchy" by Angela France

There are so many excellent poems in Terminarchy, I found it difficult to decide which ones  to highlight, so I will start at the beginning. The opening piece, 'Poetry Makes Nothing Happen,' reminded me of what I once heard said about Alice Munro’s short stories: 'Nothing happens but everything happens.' There can be many positives to nothing happening in our contemporary world—such as during the lockdown of 2020 when nature, at least for a short time, appeared to thrive. 'Poetry Makes Nothing Happen' ponders possibilities, the idea of each decision creating an alternate timeline – like a poetic chaos theory. The second stanza seems particularly poignant right now given the situation in Ukraine:

           Or so that a fighter sits up almost all night reading Rumi, trying
           to understand death and blood, peace and love and sleeps
           too late to be ready for the knock at the door so tells them
           he’ll follow after because he wants to hold his son and play
           with his daughter and nothing happens as he kisses his children
           because he isn’t in the car when a government missile hits it.

France seems to have a relationship with the land, to love it the way one would love a person: she writes the land’s personality, its character, and quirks. I sense a deep sadness at the destruction of nature and the march of progress, something I can sympathize with. Loss runs through the work, as to be expected in any ecopoetic collection, and it explores absences and disconnections, with regards both to nature and other people: the poems 'Fallow' and 'What Remains' made me think of the artist’s exercise of drawing a tree by observing the negative spaces in-between. Longing, too, is present, perhaps for the material in a scientific sense: tangible things, the physical world around us.

'Water Mark' is probably my favourite poem in Terminarchy; its movement follows the bends and cambers, climbs and drops of the road in the work—and like the water of the leak which lends the poem its title, it finds its path of least resistance. There is the pseudo presence of a stranger the other end of a phone-line staring at a screen as they talk, a seeming non-awareness of a world beyond the call-centre:

         She says she can’t send a crew without a postcode.
         I could tell her I know that old sycamore, leaning
         over a crumbling wall, how this bend tightens
         if you come down the hill too fast. There are houses
         backing into the hillside, hidden behind trees
         and shrubs, stately gateposts by the road
         with blurred names carved
         into lichened stone, no numbers.

Journey-ways feature prominently in Terminarchy in works such as 'Desire Path,' 'Piggy Lane' and 'Strange Road.' There are adventures of the everyday sort, the familiar seen in unfamiliar ways, small joys, open spaces, the freedom of roaming, of the frogs and sparrows you might get to know in your back yard. There is a sense of wonder present that many lose after childhood is but a distant memory.

Online life and the false sense of having done something about injustices and the climate emergency is analysed in 'Small Gods,' 'Scrolling and Blame'—and 'Missing the Blood Moon' illustrates that detachment from a true-present endless digital media can bring. The Lockdown too, is a worthy subject, in 'After,' where people ‘came out, blinking in the summer light’  while others ‘step back inside, close their doors, pull down their blinds.’

Terminarchy is observant, thoughtful and well crafted with those small details, word choices and delightful metaphors which make a difference. In 'Muscle Memory,' France writes:

          The lift of a kettle, cup, the snug of peeler
          against my thumb, the stretch of fingers
          around a winter potato. How to tong coal
          on to a new fire or draw the flame
          with newspaper held tight across the grate.
          My hands remember how to rock a crying infant,
          how to wipe a child’s face, the O of her mouth
          disappearing like a moon behind cloud.

Terminarchy is not a didactic ecopoetic collection, but instead informs and engages the reader, as good writing should. It retains a warm and largely positive outlook throughout while acknowledging the damage the human race has inflicted on the natural world. There is kindness, compassion and a down-to-earth vibe that I enjoyed greatly.

About the reviewer
Lauren M Foster is a writer and musician based in Charnwood and a graduate of the MA Creative Writing at University of Leicester.

You can read more about Terminarchy by Angela France on Creative Writing at Leicester here.