The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

Book Reviews

A close up showing two torn pieces of pink paper with slightly burnt edges.

Snowfall mixes with burning ash

Tim Murphy reviews To An Occupier Burning Holes by Ken Evans (Salt, 2022)
A close up black and white picture of a fallen wine glass, and dark liquid is splashing out.

Blown like glass into brittle intricacies

Hilary Menos reviews Slide by Mark Pajak (Cape, 2022)
Imagine a map, then make the canvas black and take away everything apart from the roads (in off-white) and some dots where settlements might be, there you have it.

玫瑰, गुलाब, rose

D.A. Prince reviews After all we have travelled by Sarala Estruch (Nine Arches Press, 2023)
Delicate watercolour showing thin branches with red flowers and two small birds flying nearby.

There are some things that can’t be washed away

Tim Murphy reviews Sing Me Down from the Dark by Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana (Salt, 2022)
Black and white image showing what looks like abstracted, shrouded figures.

One Woman Revolution

Chris Edgoose reviews White/Other by Fran Lock
Avid alt text readers will notice that sometimes I am at a loss to pull meaning from a bewildering array of abstract book covers, this one is more figurative in nature, though not entirely clear. It appears to be painting of a crystal fruit bowl with what looks like an explosion of silhouetted grapes ... or cherries ... fruit anyway ... or maybe berries.

More life!

Stephen Payne reviews Scenes from Life on Earth by Kathryn Simmonds (Salt, 2022)
Section of a book cover. It's mostly black, with silver grey lines that could be woodcuts. It shows in roughly square boxes, a tree, a tower, a bridge, some leaves and a curly vertical squiggle. Nope, I don't know either.

An outstretched imitation of the original

Jeremy Wikeley reviews bandit country by James Conor Patterson (Picador, 2022)
A section taken from the front cover, parts of the words "The" and "Arctic3 can be seen. Th cover is brown with cream text. What can you do?

Hanging onto Tam Lin in The Arctic

Helena Nelson reviews The Arctic by Don Paterson (Faber, 2022)
This is a dark book cover (could have guessed really, "Mouth of Shadows" and all that). The image looks like the inside of a cave (think "Lord of the Rings") a light comes from above and throws a circular glow on the floor.

Murderous parrots eat souls

Richie McCaffery reviews Mouth of Shadows by Tim Murphy (SurVision Books, 2022)
Portion of a book cover. It has a dark red background with parts of the words The and Red shown.

Schist and quartz and sparks of mica

Hilary Menos reviews The Red House by Sharon Black (Drunk Muse Press, 2022)
An abstract image (yes, yet another poetry book cover featuring an abstract image ... sigh) showing what looks like various shades of light to mid blue water clolour paint daubed in a swirly pattern on a light blue background.

Let the morbid fancy roam

Rory Waterman reviews Donald Davie, Selected Poems, ed. Sinéad Morrissey (Carcanet, 2022)
Some part words in yellow font on a green background. Basically, the cover of this book is yellow text on a green background, so to make it look just a little bit more interesting for the front page I have zoomed right in and cropped the image. Voilà.

Something beginning with earth

Maggie Mackay reviews Desperate Fishwives by Lindsay Macgregor (Molecular Press, Geneva, 2022)