Review by Rosa Fernandez of "The Mask" by Elisabeth Horan

‘A celebration and [a] tribute’ is how the author describes The Mask, a collection of nineteen poems directly inspired by the paintings of Frida Kahlo (and a guide to which ones is helpfully included). The mask of the title itself refers to a specific painting and one that sums up the whole concept of the collection: a self portrait where Kahlo’s face is hidden and yet still full of emotion. 

The poems in this collection are all spoken by the imagined voice of Kahlo and have a flow to them that feels like the brush in her hand, sweeping her feelings onto canvas. The voice is direct and powerful and peppered appropriately with Spanish, ‘somehow separada’ and ‘into the rear of el restaurante’ where we can understand more than we think about Kahlo’s world in the writing. You don’t need to see the paintings to get the imagery; in ‘Nectar of the Gods and a Woman’s Throat,’ the animals, her face and the thorns are all described and weighted with meaning.

I really enjoyed the knowingness and humour of this imagined Kahlo, and the witty double meaning of ‘stanza’ in ‘The Mask, Vol. 1’ was a wonderful poetic highlight: ‘I’ve told Eli to make a new stanza,’ the poem ending with the spectacular line ‘Come and f*** me in my mind.’ The respect that the author has for the artist is evident and this poetic tribute is eloquent and sensual throughout, without shying away from Kahlo’s pain or rage.

Sensitive readers may query the fearless language throughout, but Kahlo was a unique individual with an unflinching perspective on the world, and it feels authentic. This collection is as colourful and vivid as its inspiration and can be enjoyed as both enjoyable poetry and as a companion to some fascinating paintings. 

About the reviewer
Rosa Fernandez is a slam-winning poet and sometime proofreader. She also enjoys wearing silly hats. 

Review by Kathy Hoyle of "Ways of Living" by Gemma Seltzer

This wry, strange collection of stories was a delight to read from start to finish.  

Seltzer’s writing is quirky yet visceral. The collection is filled with wonderfully peculiar stories that pique the reader’s imagination and take us on a journey through familiar London streets, yet with each one, we find ourselves challenged with the unfamiliar. 

Imagine having bath time with a ventriloquist's dummy that has mind of her own and a scathing wit to boot. Meet Other Esther, Esther’s friend and sometimes nemesis, both vying for their father Raphael’s attention. A curious exploration of childhood yearning, Seltzer captures the confusion and bewilderment Esther feels when her father's love seems impossible to hold on to. 

How about taking a picnic with a miniature Mum, long dead, yet happily ensconced in a dressing-gown pocket? This is a strange and complex story, where a mother-daughter relationship is examined with real insight. Wry and witty in places yet dashed with poignancy and absurdism, Seltzer showcases her wonderful originality in 'Some Women Carry Silence in Their Pockets.' 

In 'Get Away from Earth for a While,' Andie is shocked when she receives a telephone call from her friend Leah: 

          ‘You’re joking.’

          ‘I’m not, Andie. Why are you being weird?’

          ‘It’s marriage, Leah.’

          ‘Don’t be bitter.’

          ‘Don’t be a facsimile of every other woman who ever existed. I thought you had principles.’ Andie regretted the words as soon as she had said them.

Instead of attending her friend’s wedding, Andie takes herself to the top of a tree in a London Park to eat ice-cream in her underwear and avoid the awful, yet inevitable, breakdown of their friendship.  

These are just a few examples from this fascinating collection. I thoroughly enjoyed every single story; each one was surprising, often uncomfortably sharp, yet beautifully written. I look forward to reading more of Gemma’s work. 

About the reviewer

Kathy Hoyle is an MA graduate from the University of Leicester. Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Spelk, Virtualzine, Reflex Fiction and Lunate.  

She won the 2021 Crossing the Tees Short Story Prize and the Retreat West Themed Flash Fiction Prize and took third prize in the Cambridge Flash Fiction Prize and the 2020 HISSAC Flash Fiction Competition. She was a finalist in The Forge Flash Fiction competition, a semi-finalist in the LISP Flash Fiction Award and her micro piece 'My Devil' received a Special Commendation in the 2021 Blinkpot Awards. She is currently working on her first Flash Fiction collection.

Review by Joe Bedford of "Tenderness" by Alison MacLeod

It’s telling that Lady Chatterley’s Lover, named Tenderness in its working-title and concerned in so many ways with the theme of tenderness, should have been the subject of such a vicious campaign of censorship. The trial that surrounded the novel’s unexpurgated release put our conception of tenderness on trial – a tenderness defined to exclude the physical, visceral, expletive nuances of human intimacy. It is this trial that Alison MacLeod explores in her latest novel, both through D.H. Lawrence’s life and works, and through the support Lady Chatterley drew later from First Lady Jackie Kennedy, herself a woman ‘on trial.’ The intertwining of these two lives, touching one another across time, elicits not just our sympathy for those whose inner-selves are deemed unacceptable, but a wider feeling that any of us, at any time, might fall vulnerable to the subjugation of our intimate needs. For MacLeod, this threat of subjugation is something built into the fabric of Western civilisation – into our structures of family, work, government and society. The pressure on the free-thinking (or free-feeling) individual is so great that it appears as though the whole world is willing them to fail, to concede. In this sense, there’s something fundamentally challenging in MacLeod’s worldview, resisting the self-censorship that Lawrence felt acutely and that many of us, like Jackie Kennedy, still feel circumscribing our daily freedom to live and be. MacLeod’s integration of Lawrence’s prose speaks to that inner-voice whispering beneath our reserve and tact, and works to interrogate the problematic lines between social norms and intimate needs. Like the mechanisms of self-consciousness that muddy our lives, the voices of both Lawrence and Jackie Kennedy reflect our desires, pains and confusions in equal measure. In that respect, MacLeod’s novel is tender not in the manner of a gentle lover, but in the way we are tender after the most passionate, open and human forms of intimacy.

About the reviewer
Joe Bedford is a writer from Doncaster, UK. His short stories have been published widely, including in Litro, Structo and MIR Online, and are available to read at joebedford.co.uk.

A Book That Changed Me, by Katie Sone: "A Woman in the Polar Night," by Christiane Ritter

A book that changed my life is A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter. It is her memoir of her journey and year spent in Spitsbergen (Svalbard) in 1934 with her husband. She writes of her life in a tiny bleak hut where her life is paired down to the simplest of tasks, scrubbing the cabin, chopping logs for the stove, and where a cup of rationed coffee is an event to be revered and sipped in quiet contemplation. She writes of the foreboding landscape that is bleak, dark and harsh and the pure joy she experiences when, after a long winter, the sun appears. She writes of spending months alone, surviving storms that battle with the hut, and of crawling on all fours twenty times round the hut to get her daily walk. She knows she must. On her journey to Svalbard she is told by the manager of the telegraph station: “Madam, if you want to survive the winter well you must remember three things … you must take a walk every day, even in the winter night and storms. That is as important as eating and drinking. Always good temper. Never take things seriously. Never worry. Then it will be fine.”

I read this in March 2020 when all our worlds turned upside down. I sought solace in books that would take me to distant places. I could travel without leaving the house, escaping somewhere, whilst our worlds and lives became smaller. I took comfort in Christiane’s resilience and determination, thought of the simplicity of her life and her life being stripped back to basics. It was a calming read, her words comforting and helpful. I remembered the Telegraph Station Manager's words and, even though anxious and scared of what was happening all around us, I took a walk every day and found joy in the simplest of things and revered my daily cup of coffee.

 

About the reviewer

Katie Sone is a writer and delivers writing for wellbeing workshops. She is also a part time librarian for Leicester Libraries. You can find out more here.

Review by Cathi Rae of "A Voice Coming from Then" by Jeremy Dixon

I have been carrying this book with me for weeks now, carefully transferring it from bag to rucksack to bike basket, partly because I wanted to be able to dip into it again and again, but also because, somehow, I wanted to take care of the child / the boy / the young man in this work.

This is not an easy collection – it comes with trigger warnings of suicide and bullying – and includes description of the author’s suicide attempt age fifteen, teenage diary entries, notes from teachers and psychiatrists and heart-breaking contemporary statistics on suicide and mental illness amongst young LGBTQA+ people.

These poems are deceptively simple with razor sharp observation, brutal honesty  and a deftness of touch that gives space for the reader to understand both what is said and what is left unsaid. It would be easy for a less skilled poet to create a collection that shouts its polemical heart – and yes, of course, there’s anger and sadness here. Many of the poems commemorate a gay male world as AIDS / HIV took hold and a time period where being identifiably gay was still enough to fear violence, bullying and prejudice – but they are also a celebration of love and toughness and survival and managing grief.

I am delighted, beyond delighted that the fifteen-year-old Jeremy’s suicide attempt failed – actually I’m delighted when anyone is able to come back from that brink of despair – because now we have this collection and it’s beautiful and important and needs to be read.

About the reviewer
Cathi Rae is a spoken word artist and poet. Her debut collection is Your Cleaner Hates You and Other Poems (Soulful Publishing, 2019). She is currently working on an M4C-funded Creative Writing PhD at the University of Leicester on telling marginalised lives through poetry.

You can read a review of Cathi's collection on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Review by Matt Nunn of "Sin Is Due to Open in a Room Above Kitty's" by Morag Anderson

The title of this slender debut chapbook gives off a whiff of seduction and promised delight, and whilst it is not sin that Morag Anderson is serving up in these thirty-three brief pages dripping with senses and emotions, she very much seduces with calm, concise writing amongst all the storms that are erupting and bashing her characters around. This fully stocked cast of, one assumes, dramatis personae seems to be constantly enduring things that happened to them, rather than possessing the agency to control the things that happen. Yet endure they always seem to do, despite themselves on occasion, emerging triumphant and in full poetic voice ready to sing of these forbearances and victories.

These are poems where nothing much seems to happen on the surface, yet when they intrude, like slow gentle ripples, into the consciousness of the reader, they explode and clout you about the senses, announcing their business as they do, showering the reader with shards of insight into the modern condition.

Whilst initially you may have some sympathy for the titular character of “Last supper with Sarah,” it is a poem that seduces and wraps itself around you until you get to the denouement when you discover that Sarah is almost certainly a much-deserving recipient of the punishment being meted out to her.

For days after my first read of these poems, my head was full of echoes of Morag Anderson’s poems that I just couldn’t shake, each wave full of poetry that I had enjoyed and needed to mull over. She also owns that super-power, that electrical surge in her nib, that can re-cast the apparently mundane into something of fascination worthy of interest and celebration. I’m not sure there is a better compliment for a book, or for a poet.

About the reviewer
Matt Nunn is the author of five poetry collections, the latest of which is St. Judes College Reject (RedSox Press). He works as a freelance writing tutor, writing coach, editor and writer and teaches Creative Writing at Solihull College and has performed his work on TV, radio and a million different venues, to audiences big and small, enthusiastic and indifferent, for over 25 years. He’s still amazed at how he gets away with it all.

Review by Inés G. Labarta of "That Was" by Sarayu Srivatsa

‘My memory, like an ant, stops at each hurdle and drifts down a less difficult path.’ Such is the start of this lyrical, bittersweet novel, which follows intimate moments in the life of a young Indian woman, Kavya, who, thanks to his uncle's trading business, spends long periods of her life in Japan. That Was has well-crafted language and heightened attention to detail, and Kavya’s voice is honest and compassionate when narrating the experience of the woman she once was. Each of the novel's short chapters is in itself a meditation on enlightenment, love, adventure, grief, and passion.

But perhaps the most powerful aspect of the novel is its celebration of multiculturality. In Sarayu Srivatsa’s work, ‘multiculturality’ is not a token or a cliché, but a way of existing. Her character, Kavya, spends most of the novel trying to remember and come to terms with the traumatic attack she suffered in her Indian hometown when she was a child. Travelling to Japan and getting immersed in its new culture with the help of a cast of well-rounded and diverse characters is what allows her to process those terrible memories. As any traveller will already know, having the ability to put distance between oneself and one’s familiar environment allows for deep introspection and enrichment. And this process is embodied in Kavya’s own story. She embraces Japanese culture with candour and enthusiasm, to the point where, at times, she brings in Japanese words to her narrative when they express concepts that don’t exist in English: ‘The reflection of the sunset in the pond was a shot of red-orange silk. Simple. Subtle. Indefinable. Shibui.’ 

Ultimately, That Was reminds us of the strong, yet often forgotten links between cultures. This is beautifully expressed by S-san, a Japanese woman who ends up becoming a mentor for Kavya. When discussing the iconic Japanese red torii gates, she says ‘Did you know that the word torii comes from the Indian torana, and its design originated from the gates of the Sanchi monastery? And did you know that Baizaiten, the Japanese goddess, was derived from the Indian deity Saraswati? Some Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines have halls dedicated to her. She is the goddess of everything: water, time, language, music, knowledge.’

About the reviewer
Inés G. Labarta is a Madrid-born writer and artist currently based in the northwest of England. She is the author of a collection of middle-grade novels, Los Pentasónicos (Edebé, 2008-2010) and two novellas, McTavish Manor (Holland House, 2016) and Kabuki (Dairea, 2017). She lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Wolverhampton and directs The Wandering Bard magazine and podcast.

Review by Matt Nunn of "Records of an Incitement to Silence" by Gregory Woods

Many of these rigorously formal poems in this collection occur in a catch-all city, never named yet a definite state, awake with both loss and discovery, that is known to all in its haunted folds and enveloping shadowless twilight. Yet still it tingles with the unfamiliar, as the poet curates a guide to all its buzzes and charges written in intellectually enlightened neon.

Most in the sequence of unrhymed sonnets that form the discordant narrative, with varieties of  character, if not always voice, that underpin the collection, are connected, if at times only vaguely, by a mutual sense of disturbance and displacement. Sometimes these searches are fused by erotic fissions for loves that are sometimes found, but often lost.

These metrical compositions, never co-joined in rhyme but certainly held together by straight lines, are both bare and stark yet are never pruned into mystery and inaccessibility. There is no pressure to have to work over-hard to crack the monochrome edges, to dive into the centre were meanings are easily divulged and distilled. That’s not to say that they roar with neither welcome nor ease; there’s education and erudition ahoy here. Each line doesn’t say much, but throbs with meaning until in aggregate a large part of our shared experiences are raked up and presented back to us as a restrained wildness.

These poems are tuned and primed with a certain knowledge that they sail with full stateliness and grace towards their final destination, immaculate and exact

It is a feat to describe a world so brimming over with dissatisfaction and disappointment with such precision. But of course, Gregory Woods, a poet with an engineer’s eye for angles and plans, the economical lyricist and master of understatement, pulls it off as a coherent narrative whole from a collection of fractures, without a wasted word, nor sentiment.

About the reviewer
Matt Nunn is the author of five poetry collections, the latest of which is St. Judes College Reject (RedSox Press). He works as a freelance writing tutor, writing coach, editor and writer and teaches Creative Writing at Solihull College and has performed his work on TV, radio and a million different venues, to audiences big and small, enthusiastic and indifferent, for over 25 years. He’s still amazed at how he gets away with it all.

Review by Tracey Foster of "Fan-Peckled: Twelve Old Shropshire Words in Poems and Pictures" by Jean Atkin and Katy Alston

The smooth, matt cover of this illustrated book of poems gives a hint to the landscape of texture within. The onomatopoeic sounds of gates closing with a ‘clicket’ and footprints tramped through ‘slud’ echo through the lanes, hedges, skies and streams of these old paths. We get to feel the earth between our very fingers, ‘grey clay marbled with yellow’ as it ‘clarts’ up behind the heavy horses’ hooves. We feel the warm air of long summers past as the red kites take to flight ‘like a loaf rising,’ and we watch field furrows, dreaming of ‘the golden rustle of next summer’s wheat.’

Katy Alston’s grainy pencil sketches, splashed with wet tints, sit beside the words and capture images of a Shropshire past: narrow barges, shire horses, dappled undergrowth and red kites overhead. She uses a muted pallet to convey a disappearing pastoral life, as beautifully described in 'Noon-spell,' where a resting labourer, watches the sunlight on the cobbles:

          How the sun, in an odd trick,
          is spelling time to turn 
          a man from cartwright to mechanic.

 

The native dialogue is annotated with simple footnotes that explain the colloquialisms, giving us a deeper understanding of the poems, which were originally inspired by The Shropshire Word-Book: A Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words (Georgina F. Jackson, 1879). This is an exercise in keeping alive our ancient words, much championed by author Robert Macfarlane, who advocates the retelling of our forgotten lexicons - ‘language is fossil poetry’ - and who would no doubt applaud this exercise. 

Twelve expressions taken from the Word-Book are the starting point for the poems:

• Buts and Feerings - a number of furrows ploughed onto the land
• Lady-With-The-Ten-Flounces - a child’s term for a goldfinch
• Clicket - the fastening of a gate
• Fan-Peckled - to be freckled
• Keffel - a worthless horse
• Talking to Moments - mumbling to yourself
• Geolitudes - a burst of temper
• Shalligonaked - a useless, thin overcoat
• Glid - term for the Red Kite
• Noon-Spell - a labourer’s lunch time
• A Corve of Oddlings - a wicker basket of many things

 

From Fan-Peckled:

         Last night there were the speckled lakes
         On a sickle moon not watched
         Nor wished upon through glass.

         Then morning fetched a dot-dance in the woods
         Of deckled oak leaves and the bee-pad
         Footfalls, pollen-tickled, in the foxglove.

A collaboration of poet and artist, this is a lovely collection that is a timely diversion from modern problems and will apply a balm to the mind, through language, image and texture.

About the reviewer

Tracey Foster has been teacher of Art and Design in schools in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland for over 40 years. She took part in the Comma Press short story course in 2019 and had a short story published in a collection, Tales from Garden Street. She had a poem about Covid published by BusPoetry Magazine and has since commenced an MA in Creative writing at Leicester University.