Reviews

• Other Countries edited by Claire Trevien and Gareth Prior
  

  
  

• Advanced Magic for Beginners by Joe Hakim
  

  
  
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  Cairn
  by Richie McCaffery
  Reviewed by Judi Sutherland

  This is one theory: that the people who become poets are those who are living the ‘examined life’ as Socrates exhorted us to do. Poets notice things; they store them up, ruminate on them, invest them with meaning, and then, out they come as poetry, transformed but recognisable. At the outset of their careers, the part of life that poets often examine is their own identity. Where are they from? Who were their forebears? How do they fit in to their own story? ‘Cairn’ is Richie McCaffery’s first collection. Throughout the book, his past, and his family’s past, are his major concerns.
  
  >Here’s another thing; early in a poet’s career, he or she will receive advice about how to turn ruminations into good poetry.

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• Terror by Toby Martinez de las Rivas

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  Tree Language
  by Marion McCready
  Reviewed by Kirsten Irving

  Marion McCready is a poet of bloody intensity and highly loaded, symbolic imagery. Intricate observations of flowers and herbs morph into meditations on the brutality of nature and the ravaging of the body. See “Two Daffodils Lying on a Window Ledge” become a “contamination of my pretty home space”, “lying there like a childless couple”. Or the basil “growing scorpions in my brain”. Or the discreet harbinger “hand-print of wind-chill” in the title poem. The wilder, terrifying side of the natural world creeps closer to the speaker with every line.
  
  I was most interested in McCready’s documentation of anxieties from myth and legend, particularly regarding children. Opening poem “Clever Elsie” is based on a Brothers Grimm fairytale, and features a Cassandra-like seer tormented by a gift she “didn’t ask for”, doomed to see her own son die in a war yet to happen.

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  Immaculate Confection: A Donut Round-Up
  Reviewed by Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving

  With the threat of an e-book-only future looming on the horizon, publishers have been busy reminding us that the printed word can also be an objet d'art. Leading the poetry pack on this front is Donut Press, in some ways the smallest of small publishers, yet somehow managing to bring out beauteous book after beauteous book, fastidiously edited by the sharp eyes of Andy Ching and featuring strong cover designs by Liam Relph that avoid the 'brand template' feel of many contemporary poetry volumes.
  
  Matthew Caley's Professor Glass is swollen with the signposts of academic learning, but the references – which run the full gamut from populist to esoteric – are intentionally starved of meaning and relevance.

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Features / Articles

• 'Other Countries', History & A Passable Introduction
  by the Judge

  
  

  If you're reading this, my guess is that you must have clicked on the link in my video review of Other Countries, the poetry anthology edited by Claire Trévien and Gareth Prior. I should start by saying this little article isn't required reading for the review – it's more like some side-stuff that I felt I had to specify ...

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• London Poetry Adventures: Pilot by Jon Stone

  
  
  

• Toby Martinez de las Rivas and his Terror - OF SEX!!!
  by the Judge

  
  

  Considering I just spent a whole damn review talking about Toby Martinez de las Rivas (I can get the name right when I'm writing it) it might seem like overkill to go back to him this early. But in truth there is a lot of stuff in his debut that I wasn't able to cover in the review, so I think a coda of sorts is warranted.
  
  As I already said in the review, Terror is a very original piece of work and it's hard to think of other poets in the UK who are doing something similar, other than perhaps James Brookes, who shares some of the historical concerns but writes in a completely different style. That said, there was one point in Terror where Toby reminded me sharply of another talented young poet in the UK, whose name I shall temporarily withhold for dramatic effect.

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• Poetics of the Movie Trailer
  by The Judge

  
  

  There seems to be little disagreement that the speed and extent to which the arts are changing around us is something unprecedented. Not only the vehicles for expression, but also the measure and degree to which artistic products are consumed and their true or apparent role in society – all of these factors have been trailing the technological revolution of the past century, becoming more complex at the same rate as our lives got infused with new signs, codes, objects and voices. The criticism and theory behind them have been subject to equally drastic changes.
  
  Movie trailers point – perhaps more so than any other form – to the potential held by visual narrative to develop towards lyric and epic forms, given due time.

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