A new review of Divining for Starters

appears in Poetry Salzburg Review's twentieth issue. Interestingly, Zoë Brigley reviews Divining alongside David Cooke's In the Distance (Night Publishing, 2011), David Morley's Enchantment (Carcanet, 2010) and Evie Shockley's the new black (Wesleyan University Press, 2011), which renders me "the most avant-garde of the poets discussed here," a position I rarely occupy. The review is thoughtful and appreciative, yet the essay is of such a whole, I can't excerpt it usefully. You'll have to see it for yourself.

Four Months

I'm still waiting for you to come back. Almost every day I think of calling to talk, to put this horrible nonsense behind us and tell you all about the new cats, the teaching, poetry and ask after your cats, your teaching, what you're reading. Before I pick up the phone, though, I admit, rationally, you're gone, and then the ache, the deep-chest ache, and the longing to return to the moment of denial, the moment you were almost still here.

"Aurascope" from Nerys Williams' Sound Archive (Seren, 2011)

Aurascope

You came with Mr Rhetoric

and the light found a pattern

for his squat figure guarding the door.

We sped, or rather I, through countries

I never really knew

while a fire fell in the grate.

The phantom caller sketched my hand

watching the butterfly ring

beat metal spirals on my finger.

My favourite perfume was a room of laughter,

in the sound between my aurascope

clouds emptied of your face.

Nerys Williams

Sound Archive (Seren, 2011)

You can purchase Sound Archive for 20% off directly from the publisher.

Peter Reading, 1946-2011

Peter Reading's most recent book, Vendange Tardive (meaning late harvest), was all too prophetic about the nearness of his death. My review of that impressive collection appears on The Guardian website here, and his publisher Bloodaxe Books's blog entry on his death here.

British poetry has lost one of its most compelling, original writers.

The new issue of Shadowtrain

features some fine prose poetry, with selections from Andy Brown, Lucy Hamilton and my own just-finished MA student James Davey. At first glance, there's also interesting work from Rufo Quintavalle, Jeremy Over and Nathan Thompson. Read it here.