https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/
Sprung by Cai Draper
Written in the first weeks of lockdown in 2020 the strange mixing of emotions is familiar, life was in lots of ways shut down, and yet there was also a sense of feeling more alive than had been in years – a couple of quotes…
“one of the main problem with being alive
it that other people accept you more than yourself… 22/04/20”
“...this is the closest the world has ever seemed to closing down… 2/5/20”
Which makes us wonder if 2020 and COVID didn’t prompt revolution what really ever could?
Hey Ho The White Swan By God I Am Thy Man by Sam Quill
The poems are full of literary echoes, some of which were probably lost on me, but it pushes you into an otherworldly encounter with reality – to look around you with poetic eyes.
Cancer [+Pop Punk] by Dean Rhetoric
To be able to write about Cancer with a lightness is a great gift – sharing the rawness of emotion.
The Nakedness of the Fathers Samuel Tongue
The poem Farm Boy is charming, a homeliness and mischievous wink. While Sauna recounts the equalising nature of nakedness, a “chorus of wonky bodies”, that is liberating.
She Shapeshifter by Seanín Hughes
I tagged the poems Echoes and Covenant, both have a tenderness and honesty that is the charm of this pamphlet – a clear sighted look at the relationship with the body and spirit.
Your Human Shape by Matthew Kosinski
Poems that use a range of unusual forms which add to the sense of dislocation that many of the themes explore.
Your Retreating Shadow by Rochelle Roberts
These are well crafted poem that have a punch – in particular DWF and Passive
Knife Edge by Colin Bancroft
An exploration of their stabbing these are unsettling poems even as they help the experience settle.
The Bare Thing by Len Lukowski
I put tabs in Anal, which is honest about complex relationship with that sex, as well as Room World and London.
<boby>of work</body> by Nóra Blascsók
Nóra explores the form on the page as creatively as the words themselves.
Collected Experimentalisms 2001-2004 by U. G. Világos
I didn’t really connect with what this was trying to do unfortunately.
Omniscience by John Greening
Playing off ideas from science and scientists from the past this becomes a playful collection.
Somewhere, Looking by Amber Rollinson
Paired with ethereal photos these poems look intently at the world around us.
ROB by Robert Kiely
Moving between a wide selection of forms which push you to open yourself to that great range of possibilities.
Calendars by Andreea Iulia Scridon
Two of the poems
Imagine being a tree
people cutting their names into your flesh
inside a heart
Confusion
I thought I heard your footsteps
approaching closer and closer
but it was only my heart
beating against the pillow
Siren by Gita Ralleigh
Crow’s True Song
In the early glint of sun, she caws me awake
from the mango tree. Old scrapethroat rakes
trembling air, shirrs green leaves and a stupor
of sucking bees. She will not quiet her raucous
creak, nor still curved beak for other’s trilling.
Swooping too a mirror, she preens her nightglister
wings. Pecks her image in glass: kiss or sinister
shadow embrace? Her cry puckers my heart
to a scar-an ugly cry but true- this song
of crow, who loves herself. Why can’t you?
The Plum Review A collection
Responses to William Carlos Williams’ poem “This is just to say” - from the tight bounds of that prompt there is a rich and interesting diversity
I am the Table by Chrissy Williams
This found poetry from Love Island is playful – could there be anything in our current cultural landscape further from poetry than Love Island and yet here we are ...
Commonplace Book by Taylor Strickland
While it is poetically skilful this never got me by the scruff of the neck...
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