This is a beautifully put-together chapbook filled with beguiling poems/texts which appear to combine found materials with non-sequiturs and aleatory work which is full of surprise and wit. You’ll never get bored reading this stuff.

There’s a sense of the hermetic about these pieces insofar as they feel self-enclosed and often generated by a thought, some vocabulary, an artwork (Hawkins is very influenced by visual art-forms) which then becomes the wandering focus of the whole. At the same time there are political references and nods to ‘the outside world’ which keep you very much on your toes.

de chirico

in the paintings there are few signs of people

yet there is evidence of creation

in the towers and squares, the sun

being the centre of it

I am running into the distance

attached to shadow

afraid they will catch me

I hold up his baby daughter and smile at her…