The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

Pamphlet Reviews

An old black and white photo of two kids, one older boy and a younger girl.

Catch the heart off guard and blow it open

Annie Fisher reviews Skin & Blister by Blake Morrison (Mariscat, 2023)
Section of a multi coloured book cover (think slightly psychedelic swirly greens pinks and purples). Part of the words "Dirty Martini" can be seen in block capitals.

SEQUINS NOW

Isabelle Thompson reviews Dirty Martini by Natalie Shaw (Broken Sleep Books, 2023)
Mostly orange and orange tinted cover showing what looks like a woman's face half hidden by something that appears to be a vertical semi transparent column with thin diagonal white stripes on it.

Monsoon night-song

Steven Lovatt reviews Mother of Flip-Flops by Mukahang Limbu (Out-Spoken Press, 2022)
Now, If you have been paying attention you will have noticed my increasing frustration with book covers that really show no effort. This one is kind of pinkish with a cartridge paper like lined texture, almost as if they hade made the cover from, well, pinkish cartridge paper.

Images of aftermath

Mat Riches reviews Exposed Staircase by Will Eaves (Rack Press, 2022)
A line drawing showing an anchor and a compass on a cream background.

A slick torpedo hurled from the blue depths

Isabelle Thompson reviews Temporary Stasis by Lucy Holme (Broken Sleep Books, 2022)
Cream text on a red background. For added excitement, this text is vertical!

Yielding to water

Clare Best reviews The Water People / Gens de l’eau by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated by Marilyn Hacker (Poetry Translation Centre, 2022)
Portion of a book cover showing an abstract image (I know , another one, but this one is quite good). The background is horizontal thick blue and red wavy lines. On top of this are some flat yellow graphics representing wooden signposts.

Haunted, haunting, cursed and cursing

Bruno Cooke reviews Farewell Tour by Stefan Mohamed (Verve, 2022)
Composite image made from two book covers showing (on the left) an abstract shoreline with sky and (on the right) an abstract grey background with white squiggles and brown leaflike squiggles. I know, so many abstract images! It seems to be a poetry thing, the abstract image. Sometimes you get a nice picture of a friendly dog, or a cow. But mostly it's an abstract thing.

More sea than land, more sky than earth

Jane Routh reviews After Clare by William Thompson (New Walk 2022) and A Separate Appointment by Rebecca Farmer (New Walk, 2022)
Textured image in charcoal and grey. It's probably tea.

Language walking across borders

D.A. Prince reviews Colours & Tea (Human) by Tomi Adegbayibi (Muscaliet Press, 2022)
A photograph showing golden wheat-like grass with a textured blue background.

A soft labyrinth of signals

Hilary Menos reviews The Grass Boat by Imogen Forster (Mariscat, 2021)
A black and white woodcut print. It is abstract in nature, but seems to show glasses, one upturned with a spider in it.

Put me in a drum and bang me

Tim Murphy reviews The Barman by Helen Bowell (Bad Betty Press, 2022)
Light green textured paper background with two off-centre white dots.

And far away a writer drawing a breath

Regina Weinert reviews Uneasy Pieces by Nancy Campbell (Guillemot Press 2022)