Using simple language, in a variety of poetic forms, Custer has created a powerful work that called out to me for compassion. I’ve heard Custer read from this collection and now, reading the entire book, I must say there is only one thing that could add to the beauty and impact of the work: performing the complete collection on stage as a choreographed play. Read more ..read more

The mingling of an unlikely, extraordinary outcome with ordinary beginnings forces our assumptions into a stark light. This doesn’t only happen semantically. It is also in the conjunction between different types of media, textual, rhythmic and visual – with source texts like newspaper clippings, medical case studies, and historical cast-off images woven into a story that melds chance, proximity, and banality into a cohesive poetics that is unsettling and oddly moving.  Read more ..read more

The Galloping Horse encourages an exploration of complex emotions and experiences, offering a way to process the more challenging aspects of life with a deep authenticity combined with skilful use of language and the ability to resonate with the reader on a deep level especially with melancholic subject matter.  Read more ..read more

Her writing appears to be straight forward. The language can be ordinary. It is simple in the best possible meaning of that word. Then, one reads more slowly or reads a lot in one sitting and finds one’s self looking for that other poem, Read more ..read more

A place of oceans and mountains, rivers and dreams, myths and a reality that references the nightmare of history and celebrates the wonder of being. Unbound takes readers on a journey. A journey of the self affirms the value of all selves—this journey, going from one place to another. The poems wander; they look in, they reach out. Read more ..read more

Indecent Hours, James Fujinami Moore’s inaugural volume of verse, makes me glad I occasionally have the decency to break bad habits. What provides Indecent Hours its thematic coherence are the specters of cruelty that haunt its pages, the major and minor traumas Moore documents with an economy of words as refined as it is brutal.   Read more ..read more

Sarah Sarai is full of good humor, earned wisdom and sound advice, not just for her nephew and niece but for all of us. But as she wittily cautions at the start of “A Vegas Vegan,” “I never promised you a statistician.” Nor a rose garden either! But you’ll enjoy her poetry nonetheless, no matter how perplexed you remain. Read more ..read more

The variety of topics covered in Tickets to the Fall of Icarus is gripping and varied, including such things as family issues, love, political comments and sprinkles of humour. All the places mentioned are well described with vivid images.  In some of the poems the many impacts of the Corona Virus on our lives are explored and readers will recognise themselves in the characters. Read more ..read more

he family obviously draws on a wealth of literary references, there are e. e. cummings inspired parenthesis that litter the pages as well as nods to Shakespeare (I sleep, I dream) and Keats (ode to a cam girl). Spending time with the other denizens of the Cafe Trieste during the 80s surely rubbed off on him. But Herbert wears his influences on his sleeve, not for him the stream of consciousness of Ginsberg or the surrealness of Kerouac, instead we get the Sysyphean verses. Read more ..read more

In The Dinner Party Keating brings to light what for centuries has been ignored: the power and strength of women. Keating resuscitates the experience of women in this book. Her poetry traces the lives of women who demonstrated their influence, broke barriers, gave their lives for others, were oppressed or defied patriarchy.  Read more ..read more