As I began reading ‘The Two Magicians’, the long poem that constitutes the bulk of Paul Bentley’s Largo, it brought to mind David Peace’s novel GB84 and Jon dos Passos’s … Continue reading »

I knew I was going to like Long Cuts from the moment I spotted the familiar brown cover at the 2011 inaugural Free Verse Book Fair in London’s Exmouth Market – a … Continue reading »

I first encountered Glyn Hughes’ poetry in 1979 when I read Best of Neighbours, his New and Selected Poems. I was twenty and looking for a poetry that spoke directly to my own … Continue reading »

A Compression of Distances by Daphne Gloag, one time medical journalist, and scholar of classics and philosophy, is a paean to her life with her late husband, to whose memory … Continue reading »

Reaching Peckham is a book length sequence telling the story of a group of 3 disparate Peckham citizens. It is voiced by a narrator called Lorna, who is single and … Continue reading »

Ian Parks seems to attract oxymoronic statements from reviewers, such as ‘powerful reticence’ and ‘tender severity’. This may be something to do with his subject matter, which is love.  Earlier … Continue reading »

A couple of months ago a slim volume by a poet unknown to me, the cover the colour of brown wrapping paper, endorsed on the front by Simon Armitage (‘Remarkable, … Continue reading »

This is a long poem, published in a handy buff volume. It looks light and lyrical on the page, until page 59 when it expands for the one page of … Continue reading »