by Kate Birch | Sep 4, 2024 | Reviews
At the Edge of Language Simon Maddrell, The Whole Island There are some diamonds that are mostly black because their unique crystalline structure absorbs most of the light. Change your perspective as you look at them and it seems that different parts...
by Kate Birch | Jul 8, 2024 | Reviews
The Adjustments (Two Rivers Press, 2024) assembles a narrative from pick-pocketed moments of a life presented in backwards motion. The poems within speak of multiple losses, grief – historic and new – and yet, the reader emerges from the pages with...
by Kate Birch | Jun 24, 2024 | Reviews
‘There is that kind of heat / in some hands’, S. Preston Duncan writes in his richly lyric poem ‘You Don’t Steal from the Witch’s Garden’ – and this extraordinary poet could be speaking of his own poetry – which blazes with a rare and precious artistic fire. In...
by Kate Birch | Jun 3, 2024 | Reviews
Birds Knit My Ribs Together has a meditational quality, timeless as nature itself, where we experience Barnett’s intimacy with birds. It’s a sharply observed, linguistically lively, lyrical collection which focuses almost exclusively on his deep and long-lasting...
by Kate Birch | Apr 8, 2024 | Reviews
The epigraph to Owen Lewis’s new work of poetry, Knock-knock (Dos Madres Press, 2024), makes reference to a quote from the Porter in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which many see as a very welcome break from all the madness and murder taking place in the play, meant...
by Kayleigh Jayshree | Mar 10, 2024 | Reviews
Makeover by Laurie Bolger is a sizzling, dissolving snapshot. It’s a sticky but persistent moment in time. Laurie Bolger is a talented poet and narrator, with clear strengths in imagistic and narrative writing. Her work reminds me of Cecilia Knapp, Rachel Long,...
