This slim volume is thoroughly worth the £5.50 it costs if you don't get it for free as a reviewer. It provides plenty of poems, a range of themes and forms, and above all, the interest of reading a collection that grows and gains confidence as the reader progresses through it.
In the first few pages, poems felt a little static, the repetiton of lines, which she uses powerfully elsewhere, sometimes felt awkward. But a haiku stands out for its pleasant, almost cosy image of boats at rest - "shoes expecting feet". Its calm understatement, with the backdrop of nature just outside the frame of the poem, is true to the mood and root of haiku. Very quickly, the collection gets into its stride. Images are powerful, unique and clear; form is free but there are certain turns or sleights of hand which she favours: repetition of a first and last line, a final couplet. Throughout, there are images, moments, that hit the eye like the sun hits a mirror: "skin stammering" with cold, "small, hot cries of children" watching fireworks.

What pulls the collection together is emotion: love, despair, passion as destructive as desirable, fear and need, anguish. Even when observing the way rain "decomposes" a window - an image which is precise, unique and powerful - the rain is also "flinging its whole soul, brave wet heart out", and that is perhaps a fair description of what this poetry does too. There are volcanoes and stars and sex. The bulk of the poetry spares nothing and bares everything, going for the heart with a scalpel, as indeed poets should, seeking for truth. And yet my favourites, (which probably betray my own taste more than anything) were the cooler ones: Almost A Cyclist, Moon Landing, Preparing to Paint, The Cat's Response to Yellow. All these are in the second half of the collection, and they are all as good as anything I have read recently. If it needed to, the collection could stand on these four excellent poems alone - but happily, it has much more to recommend it.

Thanks so much for the review, S's S! Glad you enjoyed the offering. And you're right - it does take me a while to get into my stride. With fiction too!

Ooh, and funny how everyone likes that cat poem. Cue for more poems on cats, tee hee?!

Many thanks again

A
xxx