This past week, I've bought some new (and not quite so new) poetry books, and all, alongside Orhan Pamuk's prose memoirs Istanbul, are thoroughly enjoyable yet very different reads: among them Frances Leviston's debut, Tom Paulin's Liberty Tree and Martha Kapos's My Nights in Cupid's Palace.
The latter has struck me especially as Kapos's poetic voice is quiet, subtle and extremely succinct, but at the same time often affecting and resourcefully imaginative. Though the collection on the whole is largely consistent and enjoyable, then, it is perhaps worth reading if only for a few of its more sparkling and moving poems, and the ones which struck me in particular were the rhythms of 'The Swing', the quiet desolation of 'Lost Profile', but most of all the carefully unpacked and suggestive metaphors of 'Finding My Bearings', a poem you can read on Todd Swift's Eyewear from when Kapos was a featured poet. Have a look here.
Otherwise, I'm starting work (work in that I'm being paid for it; otherwise it's much more fun) reading and rereading through collections by Penelope Shuttle and Daljit Nagra, in research preparation for critical perspectives for the British Council's Contemporary Writers site (see 'Reviews and Other Stuff' in the sidebar). And writing and editing some more of my own poems: Blake, swans and angels, as it goes. Will be interesting to see, as ever, where exactly they take me.
The latter has struck me especially as Kapos's poetic voice is quiet, subtle and extremely succinct, but at the same time often affecting and resourcefully imaginative. Though the collection on the whole is largely consistent and enjoyable, then, it is perhaps worth reading if only for a few of its more sparkling and moving poems, and the ones which struck me in particular were the rhythms of 'The Swing', the quiet desolation of 'Lost Profile', but most of all the carefully unpacked and suggestive metaphors of 'Finding My Bearings', a poem you can read on Todd Swift's Eyewear from when Kapos was a featured poet. Have a look here.
Otherwise, I'm starting work (work in that I'm being paid for it; otherwise it's much more fun) reading and rereading through collections by Penelope Shuttle and Daljit Nagra, in research preparation for critical perspectives for the British Council's Contemporary Writers site (see 'Reviews and Other Stuff' in the sidebar). And writing and editing some more of my own poems: Blake, swans and angels, as it goes. Will be interesting to see, as ever, where exactly they take me.