reviews

above zanzibar abdul jamal

THIS PAMPHLET LOOKS neat and unsentimental: an austere grey cover, compact title, and a small graphic. The author peers out from his photo on the back somewhat disbelievingly. The poetry, however, couldn’t be more different. Jamal is a skilful storyteller, richly describing and reflecting on personal, colourful memories

with a beautiful sense of pace and drama. The poems progress from “his early years in East Africa” to “more recent events”, which include witnessing the 2004 tsunami:

                   

                   At Ao Phra Nang, remote as the name,

                   an elbow in dry white sand,

                    I reach for my digital camera to capture the change.

                  

                   A long-tailed taxi-boat flung on its side

                   enters the frame,

                   red seat cushions float in disarray.

This careful build-up of information and images is typical of Jamal’s style: logical, economical and precise. Most impressive is the way his words and ideas seem to unfold effortlessly one into each other, like a teacher telling a gripping story, although it is hard to illustrate this without quoting an entire poem. One of the best pieces grapples with the ethics of memory and memorializing: should the poet “delete the image” of a dead woman “stored for history” from his camera? The ideas brought up here are neatly relevant to the entire volume, all poetic ‘snapshots’.

   

He is also skilled at using form. One poem, ‘Inside the wardrobe’, tells us about a child’s first unfortunate cigarette which sets alight the family house. The sentences are short—contracted—the grammar stunted, missing conjunctions or verbs—and the stanzas are also short, only two lines:

                   A match struck in the dark

                   a blinding orange flame.

This simple but effective mirror of the child’s physical and psychological constriction is again typical of Jamal’s organic writing style. The shape suits the content and there is never any sense of form being used for its own sake

   

Overall, I can definitely recommend this one. Get down with “Above Zanzibar”; a winner.

Chris Beaton, Happenstance

 

the shape of every box helen mort

...Helen Mort's the shape of every box is well aware of its relationship to the narrative preoccupations of post-Larkin poets, especially the weaving together of disparate narrative strands as seen, say, in the poetry of Paul Muldoon. It's not too far fetched to say that poetry attempting to to escape some of it's conventions spawned a good deal of poetry about trapped lives- 'Mr Bleaney', 'Terry Street' and Motion's characters cut off by infirmity ('Anniversaries), oppression ('Anne Frank Huis') and a free-floating loneliness pervading both lives and landscapes.

Mort's poems share this theme of the trapped individual, whether trapped by choice ('Houdini'), addiction ('the day the cat got his tongue') or the tyranny of the eye ('Night Shift'). But what makes this collection so appealing is the way the poet has been able to combine the idea of the trapped person with the theme of risk-taking...... it's been a pleasure reading them.

Michael Bayley, Seam Magazine

 

humbug abi curtis

Abi Curtis has a visually intense relationship with her world, one full of close-ups, Your arms: alive with optic down, and a head-sized bruise/ the colour of bears on asphalt, of small, subtly anthropomorphised creatures, of electricity - the poems Ohm and Ampere - and opened out with unexpected imagery and confident analogies. She is essentially female in her use of the body; using the physical to inform us of her depth, her quietness, as if finding out about herself as she sits on a horse, sees herself when a child, tells us of moles and snails.

She is a writer who effortlessly imxes the concrete and surreal, picking out the edges of a hamster/ clattering around a wheel as if/ he were powering back up./ As if to weave silver. The last lines, short verses of her poems, gently clutch them, offer them whole, complete.

Ken Champion, More Poetry

 

 

queen of the cotton cities adam o'riordan

tall lighthouse has just begun a 'pilot publication' project covering a series of pamphlets by poets aged 30 or under, two at a time, over the course of the next three years. One of the first two writers in the series is Adam O'Riordan with queen of the cotton cities. The pamphlets title neatly encapsulates the most striking facets of his work: it's ambition, it's precision and it's use of poetic register.

The title is plucked from the opening of 'Manchester', in which O'Riordan mentally reconstructs the city's industrial heritage and it's history. That he is willing to take on such a broad canvas is testament to both his ability to produce work beyond his years and to his confidence as a writer.

An astute observer, O'Riordan pays a good deal of attention to the music of individual phrases - see 'Blossom' or 'Small Adult Skull', for example..... as a whole, queen of the cotton cities feels well-realised andf balanced. Themes of love's what-could-have-beens, memory and religion are tidily threaded throughout and there are some daring shifts of scale and location - 'NGC3949' and 'Trawling' among others.

Gareth Jones, Wolf Magazine

 

 

in a distinct minor key marc swan

Marc Swan, from Portland in Maine, is another we have been pleased to featurein iota. This collection of 25 poems illustrates his style well enough... Swan's ability to write concisely and with such restraint brings out the emotional power between the lines.... sensitive, provcative, generous and not at all wasteful with his words. tall-lighthouse have done well to invest in him. Please check it out.

iota 78

 

weightless brendan cleary

The poems and images float over the pages, often dreamlike, while
still managing to stay attached to the grittiness of everyday life. Here is anguish and comfort over a shared pint, the shock of seeing your ex-lover with someone new and the way that visiting familiar places
can evoke painful memories. Cleary's descriptions are harsh and
vivid, often desolate and at times starkly beautiful, his words lyrical, straight-forward and real. The poems follow random thoughts and feelings, and the reader is swept along on a tidal wave of deep emotion and rich language. Dive in and enjoy the ride.

Rocks Magazine, Brighton

A noted performance poet and, just as importantly, a poet of the printed page, Brendan Cleary makes a welcome return to the fray with weightless. A poetic sequence, the handsome 50-page collection charts the highs and lows of a love-affair. Obsession, sexual jealousy, undiluted longing and loss make for a powerful cocktail:

in each pint
a hole

I fall in
to you

hurt
& raw

smoke
drifting (Bar)

There is less of the high jinks we normally associate with Cleary (a writer the late, great Barry MacSweeney once dubbed "Brendan UnCleary") and more retrospective poetic reveries, bittersweet musings on love gone bad and morning-after sober and sobering truth sessions:

knowing it's today
you're making the trip

to walk in a park
in his future (Eve)

Despite a cultivated poetic persona as a kind of Beat-style literary barfly, Brendan Cleary, a child of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, has also been a quietly industrious poet, building up a hefty back catalogue of pamphlets and full-length collections, as well as being the previous editor of the much-lamented poetry magazine The Echo Room during his formative sojourn in Newcastle upon Tyne during much of the 1980s and 90s. I've been reading Brendan Cleary for 21 years, since his first pamphlet Tears in the Burger Store (Jackson's Arm, 1985) and the title poem of that debut collection contains the same kind of here and now immediacy of his strongest later work:

He broke the news so soon
she never finished
even her Big Mac

elbows on the table
her hair held back
with anguished hands.

That Big Mac is part of the cultural detritus liberally sprinkled throughout the Cleary oeuvre, up to and including weightless, which variously itemises 'a £2.59 bottle/of Sainsbury's cider,' 'a V neck from Primark,' 'crap Cindy Cam/on Live TV,' 'Joseph Beuys/& Strindberg at the Tate,' 'The Stones 'girl with faraway eyes,'' plus various spliffs and liquid refreshments. A poet highly sensitive to closely observed low life details and cultural gradations (who once published the wonderfully titled collection White Bread & ITV), Cleary occasionally swaps street-grot commentary for a kind of idealised or visionary yearning, as in Marina, one of the strongest lyrics in weightless:

I wait for you to listen out
for my voice floating down
carried by the starlings

remember our loud cries please
& in the sea there is a mirror
& in the pebbles many wishes

Brendan Cleary's previous publication, Jackson (pighog, 2004) was another poetic sequence about the eponymous anti-hero. weightless packs a greater emotional and literary punch and should not be missed.

Terry Kelly

the elephant in the corner aoife mannix

Aoife is a great poet, whether she is describing The Night You Were Born with it's dichotomy of bowler-hatted men and intergalactic vistas, or telling us to Listen (my favourite poem):

the grass is growing
the egg is breaking
the raindrop bursts

just before there is silence
there is symphony
of every song ever heard

brevity painting a wonderful mental-picture. I certainly enjoyed it and am sure all her fans will want a copy.

DJ Tyrer - The Supplement

Aoife Mannix was born in Sweden though her ancestry is Irish. She has lived in New York and London. Something of this cosmopolitanism nestles in her work. Her poems display an openness to experience and a delight in variety. Her style is smiling and direct and though charmingly innocent she is never naive. My Revolution, for example, casts a wry light on the ideas of upheaval and utopianism:

In my revolution there will be free ice cream

Lines as straightforward yet as ironic as this are her common currency. Karma Setee, for example, neatly entwines mysticism, rent, comedy, the banal and the endurance of the spirit of betterment. tall lighthouse has excellent standards of production and looks set to become an ever more impressive presence. Aoife Mannix is a canny choice.

Alan Dent - THE PENNILESS PRESS

Aoife Mannix is a sparkling performer of her own work, and it's well worth attending her readings if you get the opportunity. Her poetry in her new collection, the elephant in the corner, combines a lyrical intensity with gentle, self-deprecating humour. The poem I Will Survive made me laugh out loud- that terrible moment when, drunk and heartbroken in a 'dodgy night club' you realise you know (and believe) all the words to this song... Yet this isn't another 'poetry-lite' collection where all the reader is exposed to is 'sly wit and irony' and a 'talent for words'- this is a poet who writes about pain, physical and emotional, with unflinching honesty and engagement. In The Swimmer, she writes:

I practice stretching my shadow
It is getting thinner
My eyes are sealed
I forget to eat again
The trick is to be invisible

She employs understatement cleverly, and leaves the reader hungry but never disappointed. This is what the best poetry can do and we should be glad of it.

Catherine Smith - The New Writer

What's refreshing about her work is the straightforwardness of the language. The review on the back of this 70-page volume refers to her work as 'free of clutter', and I think that hits the mark. Mixing work about the past (Your Father, My Father is my favourite poem in the volume), travel, and relationships, this is a confident, honest, mature collection, and quite justifies the growing reputation that Aoife is gaining.

Many of my favourite poets set themselves firmly at the centre of their work (indeed, don't most poets?), and Aoife does that as well, but never indulgently so- which is a difficult trick to pull off. You feel like it's an interesting dip in and out of her life, and well worth the visit.

Monkey Kettle

ghost on the road john clarke

...ghost on the road is an excellent collection of dazzlingly brilliant and powerful poetry, from a real master of the form. The imagery is vivid, visceral and sharply focused (in some cases bordering on the super-real), truly psychedelic (and of the highest quality and potency)

Dave Skull- Creative Routes.

John's church is Jazz, his minister Jack Kerouac, his acolytes Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, with Jimmy Smith on organ. Clarke's poems weave the riffed runs of Jazz and Beat jive into his basic message of 'to be or not to bop'. I've read the collection three times, enjoying it more each time.

Steven B. Smith

the self in a photograph lisa dart

...a small but perfectly polished gem of a pamphlet containing just twelve poems, where 'the self' is explored not just through self absorption or endless introspection, but in terms of the fragility of memory, the everyday oddities an acute eye and ear will perceive, without shouting or fuss.

Catherine Smith - The New Writer

horizon & back heather taylor

...stimulating and fresh in tone and subject matter; she writes about Gods, first kisses, odd encounters in bars, in poems that are obviously skilfully honed, with a real sense of what to leave to the reader's imagination.

Catherine Smith - The New Writer

cameo poly ken champion

This is sassy, vibrant, streetwise poetry which cuts to the chase with verve and wit, fully engaged in the realities of urban living, in the complexities of relationships, film and time travel.

Catherine Smith - The New Writer

a world of sudden claws pierre ringwald

Pierre Ringwald a world of sudden claws impressed us with it's powerful use of the dramatic monologue. The variety of pieces coherently presented in the 'small room' of the pamphlet format was particularly praiseworthy, ranging from the Mike Skinnerish 'There
really isn't any point' in which boy pleads with girl not to leave ('my number is still programmed/into your phone) to the wilderness tale
of 'For what it's worth' which records a cougar attack in Ringwald's native Canada.

These accessible, loose-limbed, talking poems certainly reflect Ringwald's success on the performance circuit but they work powerfully on the page. There is a moving originality in 'Broken Toys', which precisely dissects the doomed desire of women to play 'miss fix-it' to troubled males, and an extraordinary poem which purports to be the thoughts of a grandfather doing battle with a bear: 'my survival/ lay between her forelegs/ out of claws' reach'.

PBS Bulletin, Summer 2006 (Pamphlet Choice)