I enjoyed Jenny Lewis’s Fathom very much. When I organized a multi-poet reading in Jericho last year I was delighted that Lewis agreed to take part, and her performance of Gilgamesh’s lament will stay with me for a long time. In person I found her charming, humble, smart and funny, so I have to admit to being predisposed to like her latest collection, Taking Mesopotamia, before I’d opened it.
In the event, “like” doesn’t begin to do these poems justice. Continue reading
Andrew McNeillie’s latest collection, Winter Moorings, was published a little over a week ago, and for my money is his strongest since the Forward-shortlisted Nevermore. The new collection takes risks with form and subject matter, including a number of successful longer pieces that riff on older poetic models (the discursive “By Ferry, Foot and Fate” tugs towards the late eighteenth century, while the experimental voice-play “An English Airman’s Death Recalled” dances elegantly and eloquently around the early radio dramas of MacNeice and Dylan Thomas). But today I want to look at one of the shorter pieces, reproduced below by kind permission of the author. Continue reading