The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

Book Reviews

Pieces of text in red and gold on a dark blue book cover.

Waves of lavender shadow growing darker in their blueness

Alan Buckley reviews Up Late by Nick Laird (Faber, 2023)
Painting in bright colours showing a copse of trees.

The forest’s edge

Charlotte Gann reviews Beyond the Gate by Clare Best (Worple Press, 2023)
A yellow squiggle on a greyish background. Well I suppose, given the subject matter, it could be a mathematical symbol. But if you just think squiggle you'll probably be closer.

They cannot subtract me

Stephen Payne reviews Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science by Jessy Randall (Goldsmiths Press, 2022)
Whimsical illustration showing a hill with roads twisting between rocks and a castle atop.

Something honeylike that makes me lean in closer

D.A. Prince reviews Before We Go Any Further by Tristram Fane Saunders (Carcanet, 2023)
Abstract. A red splodge on a black splurge on a yellow squidge.

* […] Mol is an imaginary friend, the latest fad everyone wants to get their hands on [go to page 18]

Isabelle Thompson reviews Making Sense by Dide (Verve Poetry, 2023)
Illustration showing a stylised dandelion head with the seeds blowing around. A red ribbon curls across the page.

A tinderbox to light all the world’s wanting

Rachael Matthews reviews The Home Child by Liz Berry (Chatto & Windus, 2023)
Ink line drawing on crumpled cartridge paper. A round face looks almost like a tribal mask with an open mouth and a block bad around and across the eyes (though we can still see the eyes). The nose is a triangle.

No one wears Brooches anymore

Hilary Menos reviews Savage Tales by Tara Bergin (Carcanet, 2022
Section of a book cover. The background is blue and parts of the letters A and F are shown in a bold yellow font.

To hear their voice bounce off the shape of things

Rory Waterman reviews This Afterlife: Selected Poems by A. E. Stallings (Carcanet, 2022)
Part of a painting showing the inside of a house and a long corridor. The lighting suggests it could be evening.

A basic beginning in tegnsprog

Carl Tomlinson reviews The House of the Interpreter by Lisa Kelly (Carcanet, 2023)
Pen and ink slightly washed out picture of a man's face.

The weight of history

Matthew Paul reviews Selected Poems 1983–2023 by Ian Parks (Calder Valley Poetry, 2023)
A study in blue. It looks like a close up of large heads of coral in an eerie blue light.

Unfashionable almost to the point of provocation

Victoria Moul reviews Arctic Elegies by Peter Davidson (Carcanet, 2022)
Print (an old one by the, look of it) showing a large (for 'large' read enormous) snail with much smaller people wearing hats trying to subdue it with ropes. Some policemen wave sticks and seem to be engaged in a dance ... but maybe it's more sinister! Who knows?

Working off the movement of the earth in space

D.A. Prince reviews Dynamo by Luke Samuel Yates (The Poetry Business, 2023)