Paul Stepehenson (Appeared first in the Winter 2017-18 Issue)
Selfie with Waterlilies Selfie with Waterlilies won the Paper Swans Press 2017 Poetry Pamphlet Prize From the intriguing opening poem Turkish Delight to the brutal honesty of the closing one, Appeasement, Paul Stephenson takes us on a journey which, whilst being rooted in familial and everyday experiences such as meals, travel, childhood and teenage angst, takes surreal twists and turns, wrapped up in a playful, yet crafted, joy in language. The issue of parental loss overarches but with a sideways glance that never means this rests heavy-handedly in the pamphlet. In a self-referential age, the ‘Selfie’ of the title is not overly intrusive and the ‘Me reflected from above’ (a phrase from the title poem) could be any one of us reflected from above, ‘seeing blue’. These are poems of the familiar yet exotic, of home and abroad, of Uncle Ben’s Rice and Baklava, of Rotherhithe and Russia, of seething and soothing – so ‘buckle and tighten’ (Waistcoat of Life) and enjoy the ride. Editor: Jill Munro ISBN 978-0-9931756-8-8 • 36 pages. £5.00 https://paperswans.co.uk/product/selfie-with-waterlilies/ |
William Conelly (Appeared first in the Fall 2017 Issue of The American Aesthetic) Uncontested Grounds "Uncontested Grounds, William Conelly’s first full-length collection of poetry, is eclectic in people and places, deftly moving from vineyard to beach, to a Hollywood filmmaking set, and even to the cockpit of a jet fighter. This is also a collection of contrasts-the din of war in “The Lead Man” versus the “hot reductive shore” of “R & R,” the tragedy of suicide in “Ernest in Elysium” versus the stir of the unborn “In the Ninth Month.” This collection of masterfully crafted poems of vivid insights, often delivered with minimalist verve and directness, is fittingly a finalist for the 2013 Able Muse Book Award." Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Uncontested-Grounds-Poems-William-Conelly/dp/192740939X For further reviews see: http://www.poetsandwar.com/review-william-conellys-uncontested-grounds/ http://www.stephensossaman.com/review-uncontested-grounds-by-william-conelly/ |
David Morley (Appearing in the Fall 2016 Issue of The American Aesthetic)
The Invisible Kings Who are the invisible kings? Why do two bears follow them round Britain? And what happens when a gypsy's curse comes miraculously to life? David Morley's new book reveals extraordinary worlds where the real and imagined converge in stories and charms, just this side of science and magic . . . http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=508 |
Jonathan Edwards (Appearing in the Fall 2016 Issue of The American Aesthetic)
My Family and Other Superheroes “Joyful and dynamic – a collection that’ll make you laugh and make you think” – Costa Poetry Book Award Judges Winner of the Costa Poetry Prize 2014 Shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 2014. My Family and Other Superheroes introduces a vibrant and unique new voice from Wales. The superheroes in question are a motley crew. Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun and a recalcitrant hippo – all leap from these pages and jostle for position, alongside valleys mams, dads and bamps, described with great warmth. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a post-industrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism. If the author’s subjects have something in common with RS Thomas, or even Terry Street-era Douglas Dunn, his technique and approach owe at least as much to contemporary American poets like James Tate and David Wojahn. https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/my-family-and-other-superheroes |
Claude Clayton Smith (Appeared first in the Summer 2016 Issue)
Contributor/Editor: MEDITATIONS After the Bear Feast The Poetic Dialogues of N. Scott Momaday and Yuri Vaella This important engaging book records the first acquaintance of poets from American Indian and Native Siberian cultures as they come to recognize their similar cultures, life-ways, and reverence for the natural world. The poetic dialogues contain a mutual recognition of kinsmen across centuries of mutual isolation . . . http://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/SMITH_MEDITATIO |
James G. Piatt
Solace Between the Lines From The Literary Yard: Dr Piatt’s latest collection of poems, travels the roads between spirituality and chaos, war and peace, and darkness and light. The poems are personal and philosophical, sad and uplifting. They come from the heart and soul of a man who is trying to cope with the elements of a modern nation involved in survival. It is a book of poems in a world of both despair and hope. “Dr Piatt’s poems do not stand at one place but flow like a rivulet down the mountain side. They force the reader’s mind to scout for meaning, to see the hidden and to love the overlooked,” says Onkar Sharma, editor of LiteraryYard.com. Readers can find some of Dr Piatt’s poems on LiteraryYard.com that capture the pulse of his versatile style and fertile imagination. https://literaryyard.com/2019/08/08/james-g-piatts-collection-poems-solace-between-the-lines-oscillates-between-darkness-and-light/ See also: https://cyberwitnet.wordpress.com/2019/07/30/solace-between-the-lines-by-james-g-piatt/ |
George Moore
SAINT AGNES OUTSIDE THE WALLS SAINT AGNES OUTSIDE THE WALLS returns us to Moore’s familiar concerns with a humanity bonded by sacrifice and insight. Although named for the small, 4th-century chapel “outside the walls” of Rome, the poems move from historical moments in a shared European/American identity to present-day encounters with remarkable people and events. On these landscape, cultures mingle and truths are blurred by the power of desire. The poetry captures these movements by sudden turns of phrase, or even slippage, as metaphors map the route of the traveler, enquirer, and interlocutor. From ancient Rome to China, from Iceland to Portugal, in the thoughts of “martyrs” and “illuminati,” the poems question Catholicism, Buddhism, and other faces of belief, as we are asked to test these truths against the ironic events of the human world. Available through Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Agnes-Outside-Walls-George/dp/1942371055/ |
Julia Webb
Bird Sisters
Julia Webb’s Bird Sisters (Nine Arches Press) is a surreal journey through sisterhood and the world of the family via the natural world. Fascinated by the ‘otherness’ of things, her poems expose places and relationships that are not always entirely comfortable places to exist. Many of them feature transformations of some kind – both real and metaphorical: a woman wears a dress of live bees or becomes a bird and family members turn into owls and sparrows.
In exploring the ways in which both adults and children are casually cruel to one another, often within a mythological framework, Julia Webb blurs the boundaries between fairy tale and reality. These families are terrifying in their complexity and dysfunction, yet utterly compelling and convincing and with dark undercurrents of humour that ensure the poems are never bleak.
http://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/bird%20sisters.html
Bird Sisters
Julia Webb’s Bird Sisters (Nine Arches Press) is a surreal journey through sisterhood and the world of the family via the natural world. Fascinated by the ‘otherness’ of things, her poems expose places and relationships that are not always entirely comfortable places to exist. Many of them feature transformations of some kind – both real and metaphorical: a woman wears a dress of live bees or becomes a bird and family members turn into owls and sparrows.
In exploring the ways in which both adults and children are casually cruel to one another, often within a mythological framework, Julia Webb blurs the boundaries between fairy tale and reality. These families are terrifying in their complexity and dysfunction, yet utterly compelling and convincing and with dark undercurrents of humour that ensure the poems are never bleak.
http://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/bird%20sisters.html
Julie-ann Rowell
https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/julie-ann-rowell
Christopher James
Farewell to the Earth
Dust to dust, that much we know. But it's what happens in between that counts. In Christopher James' mercurial second collection, Seamus Heaney breaks down in a lane; John Lennon haunts the Great Wall of China while an archaeologist is exhumed sometime in the distant future. This is where the living and the dead intermingle like passengers waiting nervously for a flight.
Reaching from the Humber to the Thames; Cromer to Kathmandu, it's a dizzying and unpredictable world tour that veers in and out of reality like a plane passing through a cloud. In the shadow of environmental disaster and the possibility of dragons, there are more mundane dramas to face too: house moves, family secrets, marriage proposals that do not go to plan, and children woken in the night by rain.
'Farewell to the Earth' begins and ends with ashes, but in between a Technicolor epic unfolds, throwing its glinting light on the everyday.
https://www.arcpublications.co.uk/books/christopher-james-farewell-to-the-earth-417
Farewell to the Earth
Dust to dust, that much we know. But it's what happens in between that counts. In Christopher James' mercurial second collection, Seamus Heaney breaks down in a lane; John Lennon haunts the Great Wall of China while an archaeologist is exhumed sometime in the distant future. This is where the living and the dead intermingle like passengers waiting nervously for a flight.
Reaching from the Humber to the Thames; Cromer to Kathmandu, it's a dizzying and unpredictable world tour that veers in and out of reality like a plane passing through a cloud. In the shadow of environmental disaster and the possibility of dragons, there are more mundane dramas to face too: house moves, family secrets, marriage proposals that do not go to plan, and children woken in the night by rain.
'Farewell to the Earth' begins and ends with ashes, but in between a Technicolor epic unfolds, throwing its glinting light on the everyday.
https://www.arcpublications.co.uk/books/christopher-james-farewell-to-the-earth-417