When I wrote about Claire Trévien’s first collection The Shipwrecked House in 2013, I had never met the author. Since then we’ve collaborated on readings and an anthology, been sounding-boards for each other’s scribblings-in-progress, and shared more than a few glasses of wine. So what follows can’t pretend to be an objective “review” of Claire’s second collection Astéronymes (and there are plenty of good examples of those already). But with that caveat, I wanted to put some thoughts down because I think this book is doing something genuinely challenging, and the more I’ve come back to it over the past year, the more convinced I am that it’s really very good indeed. Continue reading →