Aside from the illuminating value of the poetry, these modern poems are a pleasure to read. While specifically published as a teaching tool for writers of poetry, anyone who appreciates contemporary poetry should find The Strategic Poet to be a valuable addition to a personal library. On top of everything else, it’s both a challenging and a fun book to study with, filled with insight, imagination, rewarding tasks, and exceptionally fine writing.
An interview with Ben Ewell
The author of Sunday Afternoons and other Times Remembered: A Memoir talks about his new book, his influences, his target reader, the music that inspires him, his work in progress and more.
A review of A Little Bird by Wendy James
The stories told through these columns crosses over the other two stories until the three stories line up, weaving together like a helix, linking Jo with her mother in a way that is slightly mystical. Jo’s own reintegration into Arthurville is managed with just the right blend of nostalgia and irony, Jo’s intelligence providing a lens that is both loving and critical, allowing the town’s homey beauty and its decline to come through her perception.
A review of M by Dale Kushner
Every poem is a journey, every journey a poem. M by Dale Kushner is a stunning collection of poems depicting life’s journey in three stages. The roads of sorrow and suffering, the paths of transformation toward spiritual joy and desire, and the longing to know and feel all that is holy are contained in Kushner’s work.
A review of City Scattered by Tyler Mills
Tyler Mills’ new poetry chapbook City Scattered is in four voices, like a poetic radio play set in Berlin in 1930 when radio was booming. Mills weaves four voices/characters in an emulation of an old-style radio drama that invites the reader to explore the lives of women at this time in the context of a society dangling on the edge of totalitarianism and a world on fire. Each of the four steady voices throughout the book have poems that enrich the story we are invited into.
A review of Acanthus by Claire Potter
Claire Potter’s Acanthus both draws on mythology and subsumes the intimate and personal into its broader terrain. Potter’s work is consistently compelling, utilising the reservoir of cultural knowledge abundant in mythological stories and heroes.
A review of Angle of Flickering Light by Gina Troisi
Angle of Flickering Light tells an honest story. It’s the story of a life in progress, marked at its beginning by a series of small, devastating acts—a parent who should protect and cherish instead abuses.
A Review of The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Some genuine laugh-out-loud moments poke fun at the British, perhaps unintentionally. There’s a wonderful mini-plot around llamas which draws a chuckle, whilst the actual detectives in the story are bumbling but not unbelievable.
A review of One April After the War by C S Boarman
Throughout the novel, the author’s exhaustive knowledge of the era’s politics, technology, social mores, and the geography of Kentucky and Ohio, come into play, with the result that the reader is totally immersed in the historic setting.
A review of Daisy & Woolf by Michelle Cahill
Daisy & Woolf is a rich, complex book that blurs binaries and boundaries, provoking big questions around art, parenting, love, privilege, colonisation, and creativity.The narrative flows quickly, driven by its dual protagonists, with the book unfolding its denser meaning later, in the shared collaborative space between reader and writer.