Books for review

p&g are getting ready for another round of books for review. Let us know if you want your title included. You can find example of our reviews on the site so have a look round. You can contact us on the usual address.

If you have sent your book over in the summer and it hasn't appeared yet - we have it and will include it this time - no need to send again.

Seasonal work

Review: Of memory and furniture by Bron Bateman

Before we go any further, this is one of the best titles that I have seen for a while: it resonates right through to the end. A killer blow.

Australian poet Bron Bateman's latest collection develops through 4 parts and is described as exploring "experiences of female embodiment, sexuality, and relationships with family, lovers and institutions...concerned with expressions of female sexuality in its myriad forms – heterosexual, lesbian, and experiences of non-normative sexuality – as well as issues of maternal subjectivity, mental health and abuse and, throughout, the role of memory in enabling healing."

This is a collection that has a whole ecosystem of vividly realised friends, encounters and locations that ground and validate its often intense bodily and sexual language from the dedications to many of the poems in Part 1 to its lovers, family and transactions through to demeaning medical interventions. The poems' sequence is knitted together with motifs especially blood and piercings to the body. For adornment for example in the poem bars-

you could hang chandeliers from
these he says eyes half-closed
taking my right nipple between
his thumb...[]
I watch him redesign my body in his head.
we can pierce you here...

And pleasure - the intense Needle Play - to the painful self blame transfixing the sense of self in one of the brutal and self-healing concluding poems of part 4 Talisman:

be less serious not think I was a cut above use big words be so sensitive if I were special he would not have dared."

Everything that life throws at the poet in the end can be spoken and makes her voice and sense of self stronger. This is a collection that doesn't shrink from naming the casual diminishing sexism of institutions but also the power of healing available in situations that the poet's sensibility controls - even against what might appear to be the odds. For example in the poem Language

Either my blood, or my baby's.
Never mind, he'll say, his back to me, they're a dime a dozen.
Meaning miscarriages.
This is my first.

Later in the same poem:
I tell him. Tie me up all you like. I'm still a feminist.

The cuts are balanced by a lush sensuality of language and experience which are at times breath-taking; from the opening lines of the same poem,

At twenty, I have: my first child,
bruising, soft and black as summer plums...

to the loving "loll and sway of her thighs" in Catching up and hungry joy for example in PDAs

...I've searched and failed to find a word that adequately
describes the texture of your thighs,
or that my mouth against you
reminded of the peach I ate yesterday, its
tender fuzz against my lips...

The poems build to an understanding of sexual, body image and physical control and naming in the context of past life experience for the reader; glimpsed in poems such as shape of a girl that transforms a submissive sexual role into the powerful place inhabited by subs:

the longing to open your lips
feel the shape and weight
of that word
in your mouth

A visceral recasting of life experience of immense strength, this collection reclaims a body space long overlooked. A gift that repays study. You can find out more about Bron Bateman here @BronBateman and order the book here from @FremantlePress.

************

Cover is also very pleasing but no credit discoverable.

Review: This is virus by Joe Williams

This timely pamphlet from the poet and performer Joe Williams is described as a "sequence of erasure poems made from Boris Johnson’s letter to the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic". The poems reimagines the coronavirus communication from the prime minister sent to the public in April 2020 by redacting information to create a new commentary on the relationship between those "leading" the response to the crisis and the rest of us living the lockdown (with, as we now know, more strength, consistency and conscience).

Redaction as a technique is very effective - the story of the source material's underlying meaning is glimpsed in a faceted retelling. Its appearance as a key component in tales of political scandal and message manipulation is turned on its ahead to reveal truth.

The poet questions the official tone and message pulling back the underlying assumptions - for example on herd immunity - as we have journeyed through lockdown and its aftermath. Verbal repetition, contradictions and and an underlying simple visual beauty as words get less and less to the final poem. The full effect is gained from a reading rather than quotes or snippets which we are keeping to a minimum in this review.

Like pyschobilly for John Peel, p&g feels the lure of visual techniques like cut up, distortion and erasure very strongly; and applauds the latter's use here to place strong focus on the message while simultaneously presenting the reader with shape and structure that goes beyond the poetic. In this case asking the deceptively simple question what is missing? What are we missing? What void lies within our so-called leaders?

You can find out more from @JoeWilliamsPoet and purchase the pamphlet from Joe's website here https://joewilliams.co.uk/ - an investment of £4 p&g would recommend.

Lockdown poetry book review

We ARE reviewing books - and we are open for business. Has your poetry book come out just before or during lockdown? Have you had to cancel launches and publicity. Then get in touch.

Two great titles in review coming soon:

Bron Bateman - Of memory and furniture (Freemantle Press) and Jonathan Kinsman - witness (Burning Eye Books).

Contact us by email or DM on Twitter or Instagram if you want us to review yours.

Note: we cannot get to the regular p&g postal address at the moment so you need to get in touch with us to send a physical book.

Your book reviewed

Issue 8 of poetandgeek.com is imminent (at last - normally May Day and this one hasn't emerged until the solstice). The sharp-eyed will notice a new reviews feature. p&g would welcome ideas of what to review.

Talk to us on Twitter, email or post; send a review copy or pointing us to a particular writer's work.

You can find details of how to get in touch or send your suggested work - among with a number of other ways to contribute - here http://poetandgeek.blogspot.co.uk/p/are-you-poet-and-geek.html.

Need a review?

p&g review books. Send them to us at the usual address.

• We promise to be kind and intelligent. That's fair.
• We cannot promise a quick turnaround. But your work won't be overlooked.
• We have a worldwide readership.
• Please indicate any unusual quoting agreements at the outset.

That's all.

Review: in 100 words or less James Wood

James Wood has sent p&g his book of poems to review. It was published last year by Olympia Publishers and costs £5.99.

The premise is one that we like: each poem takes a subject from the complex to the inane and explains it in 100 words or less.

Sometimes this works very well: in the poem ...Explain how modern ideas of exponential expansion impact 19th century romantic ideals

Further up the road, Blake's Jerusalem.
a beauteous Eden, is dissected
by the A327. A detached
incision; a vivisection through all
capability's wonders.

Here the exam question title is pulled apart in a humorous style; the throwaway allusions to Blake and Capability (Brown) enhance the mannered student approach in sharp contrast to the simplicity of Further up the road. For a small poem there are an awful lot of cutting words though and I am not sure the text is strong enough to stand up to this level of Sebastianism.

In the poem The balloon Wood talks about the difficulty of pinning down his inspiration:

No one wants to be the fool at the fountain
letting the nectar pass his hands...[]
all I could put down was this...

Wood's poems are full of playful ideas and perhaps the 100 words concept does not contain them within a strong enough context in the end. You get the feeling - a little more rigour, a little more editing (there are some typos) and perhaps focus on the most successful poems to make a shorter collection would have enhanced the end result.

But James Wood's best moments at the more experimental end of his work are wry and thoughtful and the collection as a whole an entertaining read.

*Buy thesaurus. Internet keeps crashing.

You can find more about the collection and purchase it here http://www.amazon.co.uk/100-Words-Less-James-Wood/dp/1848973365.

Bitch reviews

It is so tempting isn't it? Using a review to promote yourself or score a point or worse...

It isn't new either. The bitch review has been in existence as long as writers. Walter Scott had a long-standing hatred of his antagonistic reviewer Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review. Even going so far as to publish himself anonymously in a different series of novels against his own already anonymous works to escape what he felt was a personal antipathy.

p&g was minded of the bitch review when reading a recent UK Times newspaper poetry critique. It concerned the new title Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds. I suppose the tone is set in the opening line:

"Sharon Olds (b1942) is the leading ­contemporary exponent of the “confessional” mode in American poetry..."

Goodness me! Twenty years ago when I was studying poetry at Ohio State University Sharon Olds was already known as a leading American poet. Period.

The reviewer goes on to pull apart her work in a patronising way that suggests she doesn't know how to string a line together. Odd. Sometime poets work like that in my opinion. Anti-structure. Not a stanza crime just a technique.

Anyway you can see what you make of it here http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/fiction/article1174550.ece (afraid you have to log in...)

Re View

I have been writing a review for The Eildon Tree the Scottish Borders arts magazine. It is a pure luxury to read something several times and draw some connections between the work and other ideas, authors and their books. At a time, when most of us are busy running around and getting nowhere fast, I would recommend it.

My racing around has taken me up the same road to the same place 6 times in the past 24 hours. Rain and fog and darkness. The Scottish day dawns just before nine and ends just after half past three. Windscreen is a mist of rock salt splatter. I concentrate on getting from A to B and the white line at the road side to take me where I need to go.

Re-viewing on the other hand is a whole landscape with a new map. A spot of prospecting, a grid of connections and a satisfying algorithm. Even the missing pieces can delight.

Pick up that familiar book again even if you are describing it only to yourself.

See things.

Event reviews for poetandgeek.com

Been to a cool event that we should know about? Anywhere? In any language?

Just remember it needs to feature poetry...

btw is it your own event that you are promoting? That is cool too. But nothing over-unctuous.

Thanks. We look forward to hearing from you.

And thanks to Silver Spoon Sokpop for this image.