by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Jun 17, 2026 | Reviews, Uncategorized
When Karen McCarthy Woolf begins Unsafe with an epigraph from Romantic poet John Clare, the son of a farmer who witnessed the rights to the countryside transfer from common people to private landowners, we are promised a grapple with the...
by Kate Birch | Jun 5, 2026 | Reviews
The Beat The Pulse The Wave appropriately has a pulsing energy to it, like waves crashing on a shore. Jeremy Dixon writes about life, past, present with hints at a future; it feels that each poem pins down an everyday experience but offers a slantwise look at...
by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | May 15, 2026 | Reviews
Rachel Dacus writes ‘I would say that magical realism in poetry (and fiction) removes the argument of “likeness”. It plunges the reader straight into an altered world, offering only mystery as a doorway. It isn’t always an easily entered door, but...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 17, 2026 | Reviews
An opening poem often acts as an overture for a collection and Naomi Foyle’s prelude poem (and title poem) ‘Salt & Snow’ is no exception; it appears as a kind of broken sonnet that illustrates the rupture that the poem’s speaker feels at the death of...
by Sairah Ahsan | Feb 28, 2026 | Featured, Reviews
Emma Purshouse’s third full collection of poetry is a tribute to the distinctive places and voices of the Black Country of the West Midlands. It opens with a series of personal, sideways perspectives on specific landmarks and events, such as Little Nell’s...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 21, 2026 | Reviews
Julia Webb’s Grey Time, her fourth collection with Nine Arches Press, insists on the full weather of grief. It refuses consolation or tidy acceptance, tracing the recursive ways mourning inhabits a life — memory, dream, body, animal. From the opening pages,...
