Shanty by James McDermott

From Polari Press - www.polari.com

Reading a play text is not the way the work is meant to be encountered, but this is readable and grabs you nonetheless.

Finding voice in response to grief is the core of this work – and these are really authentic characters – you could inhabit Shanty, their Dad, and their Sister – maybe that is part of it being a play text, it is driven by dialogue so you are reading each of their words, you find yourself speaking with their voices.

I am trying not to go full on fan boy about this, but it is very hard not to when James gifts us such rich works time and again

Safe as Houses by U. A. Fanthorpe

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Another one from the 1997 Forward Poetry Prize – I put a lot of tags in this one…

Sirensong – for the line…

…

We missed the jazz and swing of our extrovert parents,

The pyrotechnic raves of our groovy kids.

Our ground was never steady underfoot.

…

Collateral Damage

Under the Motorway

Deus vs. Adam and Another

Atlas

Cat in the Manger

Christmas Sounds

The Wicked Fairy at the Manger

Take a Bite – The Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology 2021

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Short stories often punch above their weight, often giving a gut punch, and there are all those moments in this collection – intensely written relationships, raw emotion – I will be added the annual anthologies for this prize to my wish list!

Artisanal Slush by Ellora Sutton

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Fourteen Poems lead me to Ellora’s work, and that should be endorsement enough! If it isn’t, the fact that Verve are the publisher should remove any lingering doubts.

There is a quirkiness to their insights that speaks deeply to my soul – among the titles are…

Self-Portrait as Formerly ‘Gifted and Talented’

Formal Apology to the teacher Who Tried to Explain Dadaism to Me

My computer thinks I’m gay

Paleface by Charles Boyle

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I got this collection having enjoyed the poems included in the 1997 Forward Poetry book, in which it was short listed for one of the prizes.

The two poems in the Forward book close this collection.

The Stations of the Cross by Sarah Lenzi

I have had this on the to read list for years, I have a particular interest in the Stations of the Cross as the artistic response to the group of Stations can bring out some intriguing nuances.

But Sarah Lenzi is exploring the physical practice of the Stations – and their basic argument is to overturn the conventional narrative that the Stations were first walked in Jerusalem and then taken West.

Sarah Lenzi demonstrates that while their were pilgrims in Jerusalem from very early dates, their visits to the sites of the Passion were generally more akin to a touristic sight seeing than the spiritual practice of the Stations. Sites were not visited in any narrative order but rather for logistical convenience, and the sites of the Passion were mixed with other Biblical and non-Biblical sites of interest.

The origins of the Stations of the Cross can instead be found in the West, and only as and established spiritual practice were they latterly overlaid on the actual geography of Jerusalem.

Decorating The Parish Church in Post-Reformation England by Susan Orlik

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Susan Orlik demonstrates, with well researched yet accessibly presented examples, that the idea that English Parish Churches were left in decay between the iconoclasm of immediate Reformation period until Archbishop Laud’s move away from Puritanism is a myth well over due debunking.

Churches remained significant building in local communities and therefore were cared for, cherished even, through the period, and many figures that are seen as uniquely Laudian where being introduced well before the rise of Laud, and even in the Laudian period were being introduced and paid for be those opposed by Laud’s reforms in seeming equal numbers as by those that were Laud’s enthusiastic supporter.

Later during the Civil War and Commonwealth there may have been a starker divide, but the reading of this back in time is not evidenced despite its endurance.

For a book born as a doctoral thesis this is very readable, and benefits form being richly illustrated – so important when discussing the physical decoration of Churches.

& Change Issue 4

www.Andchangepoetry.com  

These are consistently strong collections, I tagged the two poems from Chris Tse:

I was busy thinking ‘bout boys – which has paired statements about boys

Customers who bought this item also bought… - which begins

Pain and pleasure share a heart: what kills our joy

can also replenish it. The Internet thrives on this

conflicted nature – it never fails to remind me of

the neverending fuckening of the world but is

also the source of gentle massages for my brain:

...

Fourteen Poems Pamphlets 2023

fourteenpoems.com

 

 

Offerings by kevanté ac cash

I tagged the following

my lover is a Black woman

which I think captured the real essence and energy of the whole collection – a determination that was not angry but was not accepting the status quo either

if a flame takes long to spark, is it still a flame?

THE PEOPLE-PLEASER’S PRAYER

which I might use in liturgy sometime 

 

 

two dying lovers holding a cat by Luís Costa

A collection so powerfully witnessing to the energy, the sorrow, the sadness of the end of a relationship – but also the weirdness surrealness that can come with the emotionally charged state.

The final line of OF COURSE HE SMELLS LIKE LEMONS perhaps captures all of this “I did not kiss him for the last time just yet.”

The Forward Book of Poetry 1996

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I put tabs on the following poems

Great Grandfathers by Jane Duran

The Spy Comes Home by Gwyneth Lewis

Lovesong to Captain James T. Kirk by Deryn Rees-Jones

Striking Distance by Carole Satyamurti

Outgrown by Penelope Shuttle