Before I read A Triptych of Birds and a Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2022) I had heard Pratibha Castle perform her poems on several occasions. I knew, therefore, she was a talented writer. However, it was only on reading her debut collection that I came to appreciate fully the magnitude of that talent, for her poems are full of wonderfully resonant imagery, not a word is wasted: she is a poet totally in command of her craft.

In this collection we see Castle using the external natural world as a vehicle for exploring and understanding the inner self. She is an acute observer of nature, captured in precise, eloquent language and breath-taking imagery. In Sparrow Love she describes the courtship of two birds. The behaviour of the female is impressively conveyed in the opening stanza: ‘The female flirts her tail,/ flamenco flounce/ of a doyenne cute at charm’…