The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

Book Reviews

Grainy still from a colour film showing two boxers squaring up in a ring.

The Irish word for love

Chris Edgoose reviews Rescue Contraptions by Joe Duggan (tall-lighthouse, 2022)
A drawing of a horses head, the head is looking at us and seems to be on the body of a woman wearing a blue coat. The background is cream and white.

Bone white, star bright

Stephen Payne reviews Feeling Unusual by Ann Drysdale (Shoestring Press, 2022)
A black silhouette of a naked woman, kneeling, prostrate, on a bright blue background.

The making of a new crown

D.A. Prince reviews A Little Resurrection by Selina Nwulu (Bloomsbury, 2022)
What looks like an acrylic painting of vines, berries and white flowers.

You make a mirrorball out of the rain

Mat Riches reviews Glut by Ramona Herdman (Nine Arches, 2022)
A detail from 'Hato zu' a woodcut by Konen Uchara. It shows a rolling blue ocean with white flecks and a blue sky.

Letting the shadow out of the box

Hilary Menos reviews Turn Up the Ocean by Tony Hoagland (Bloodaxe, 2022)
Black background covered in a myriad of small white shapes. At first the look like birds, but as one looks more closely they look like small abstract figures on horseback. Or maybe on camels. Who knows?

Uncharted territory

Helena Nelson reviews Imperium by Jay Gao (Carcanet, 2022)
Partial text of the words 'England's Green'. The text is light green serif font on a dark green background. That's imaginative.

Candle flowered kingdoms around the Black Sea

Carl Tomlinson reviews England's Green by Zaffar Kunial (Faber, 2022)
A section from what could be a stained glass window; it shows a central diamond shape with a blue background and a yellow horse silhouette standing on a yellow crown. There are diamonds of dark and pale red and yellow around.

Hydra heads of rebellions

Matthew Stewart reviews The Kentish Rebellion by Robert Selby (Shoestring, 2022)
Looking through an underpass. A house can be discerned through distant mist.

Tangerine seethe beneath coal crackle

Annie Fisher reviews Relativism by Mary Ford Neal (Taproot Press, 2022)
Black background with the face of a china doll, cracked, with piercing blue eyes.

Your gift living on in cracked pots carried from garden to garden 

Maggie Mackay reviews The Doll's Hospital by Jenny Robb (Yaffle, 2022)
Naive painting of the backs of two people sitting on a wall, one has a red headscarf and orange skirt, one is dressed in black

The cruelty and largesse of high water

Mat Riches reviews Summer / Break by Richie McCaffery (Shoestring, 2022)
A fifties-style graphic showing the rocky surface of a planet with coloured moons and asteroids. The words 'Space Baby' are superimposed in white.

Maybe it’s already gone supernova

Carl Tomlinson reviews Space Baby by Suzannah Evans (Nine Arches, 2022)