Baby Apples

It was a routine to have that same dream. Some Bob Dylan man acting obscene He's got a wire in his hand and he's hooking the leaves from the tree. Say's he's looking for some baby apples and maybe a drink from the breezy rain droplets. Beneath the pale moonlight's hazy glare, I stood in a world of poverty and despair, And watched as a girl named Apples drowned, Her voice silenced, her body lifeless and a trail of salt. Her parent's wept and wailed, their tears falling like some rain battling the hail. But I stood there motionlesss, a little strange boy caught up in pain, of a life where poverty was the norm, a little autistic and a little fleeting scream. As the years went by, I played my guitar for the societies on the moon. Writing songs of love and pain, near and far, and…

This review was first published on the Empty Mirror site in September 2018. but as that site is now in seemingly permanent hiatus, I decided to post it here so that it remains available, no matter what.

Lola Ridge’s life was, in many ways, a tale of her times. Born Rose Emily Ridge in Dolphin’s Barn in Dublin, she and her mother emigrated to New Zealand as a child after the death of her father. She acquired a stepfather with a taste for Shakespeare and drink, married in her early 20s, lost a child, had a child, started publishing poetry in local newspapers and magazines. When she was 30, her marriage broke up and she moved with her son to Australia, where she studied art and submitted a collection of poems, Verses, to a local publisher AG Stephens, literary editor of the Sydney Bulletin in which much of her…

The River Which Sleep Has Told Me, Ivano Fermini trans. Ian Seed, Odd Volumes of The Fortnightly Review, ISBN: 978-0999705827, £15.95

The Dice Cup, Max Jacob (Translated, with an introduction, by Ian Seed) Wakefield Press, 2022, ISBN 978-1-939663-83-6, $19.95

The Central Laboratory, Max Jacob, Translated, with an introduction, by Alexander Dickow, ISBN 978-1-939663-80-1, $22.95

The joys of reviewing translations from languages one less-than-half knows are boundless. This is especially the case when the originals are by a poet I’d never heard of before; but in the case of Ivano Fermini I expect I won’t be alone in that ignorance. In fact, so little is known about Fermini that I had a moment wondering if he might be an obscure member of Robert Sheppard’s European Union of Imagined Authors, but no, he’s real enough.
On the plus side, my sketchy Italian and the lack of biographical information meant…

New Collected Poems, Lee Harwood, Shearsman Books, 2023, ISBN 9781848618558, £27.50

This new edition of Lee Harwood’s poems, edited by Kelvin Corcoran & Robert Sheppard, adds a not inconsiderable 200 pages to the 2004 collected edited by the poet himself. In part, this is due to the addition of the poet’s first collection, Title Illegible at the start and an additional 60-odd pages of post 2004 work. The remaining additions are poems excised by Harwood from the earlier book but here restored in their rightful chronological positions.

The first thing that struck me was the fact that just over 200 pages, almost a third of the work gathered here, represented work written and published between 1964 and 1970. What we see in the earliest of this work is the emergence of a love poet, but of a very particular kind, one who is interested less in ‘romance’ than in…

LIFT OFF: a journey of future tense, Stephen Bett. BlazeVOX, 2022, ISBN: 978-1-60964-403-1, $16

Residential Poems, Lee Duggan, Aquifer Press, 2022, ISBN: 978-1-8383587-8-5, £11.00

Birds in November, Daragh Breen, Shearsman Books, 2023, ISBN 9781848618589, £10.95

Tre Paesi & Other Poems, Peter Makin, Isobar Press, ISBN 978-4-907359-42-3, £16.27

In the Margins, Avery Burns, Magra Books, 2022, $10.00

My education in Canadian poetry continues via a package in the post from Stephen Bett which contained Lift Off and The Gross & Fine Geography: New & Selected Poems which was published not far from here in 2015 by Salmon Poetry, a bit long ago for a review though I will come back to it later.
Lift Off is a book-length serial poem consisting of 45 numbered Lift Offs, each with an additional subtitle. The sequence concerns the break-up of a marriage in the wake of the complete mental…

The River Which Sleep Has Told Me, Ivano Fermini trans. Ian Seed, Odd Volumes of The Fortnightly Review, ISBN: 978-0999705827, £15.95

The Dice Cup, Max Jacob (Translated, with an introduction, by Ian Seed) Wakefield Press, 2022, ISBN 978-1-939663-83-6, $19.95

The Central Laboratory, Max Jacob, Translated, with an introduction, by Alexander Dickow, ISBN 978-1-939663-80-1, $22.95

The joys of reviewing translations from languages one less-than-half knows are boundless. This is especially the case when the originals are by a poet I’d never heard of before; but in the case of Ivano Fermini I expect I won’t be alone in that ignorance. In fact, so little is known about Fermini that I had a moment wondering if he might be an obscure member of Robert Sheppard’s European Union of Imagined Authors, but no, he’s real enough.
On the plus side, my sketchy Italian and the lack of biographical information meant…

The River Which Sleep Has Told Me, Ivano Fermini trans. Ian Seed, Odd Volumes of The Fortnightly Review, ISBN: 978-0999705827, £15.95

The Dice Cup, Max Jacob (Translated, with an introduction, by Ian Seed) Wakefield Press, 2022, ISBN 978-1-939663-83-6, $19.95

The Central Laboratory, Max Jacob, Translated, with an introduction, by Alexander Dickow, ISBN 978-1-939663-80-1, $22.95

The joys of reviewing translations from languages one less-than-half knows are boundless. This is especially the case when the originals are by a poet I’d never heard of before; but in the case of Ivano Fermini I expect I won’t be alone in that ignorance. In fact, so little is known about Fermini that I had a moment wondering if he might be an obscure member of Robert Sheppard’s European Union of Imagined Authors, but no, he’s real enough.
On the plus side, my sketchy Italian and the lack of biographical information meant…

The River Which Sleep Has Told Me, Ivano Fermini trans. Ian Seed, Odd Volumes of The Fortnightly Review, ISBN: 978-0999705827, £15.95

The Dice Cup, Max Jacob (Translated, with an introduction, by Ian Seed) Wakefield Press, 2022, ISBN 978-1-939663-83-6, $19.95

The Central Laboratory, Max Jacob, Translated, with an introduction, by Alexander Dickow, ISBN 978-1-939663-80-1, $22.95

The joys of reviewing translations from languages one less-than-half knows are boundless. This is especially the case when the originals are by a poet I’d never heard of before; but in the case of Ivano Fermini I expect I won’t be alone in that ignorance. In fact, so little is known about Fermini that I had a moment wondering if he might be an obscure member of Robert Sheppard’s European Union of Imagined Authors, but no, he’s real enough.
On the plus side, my sketchy Italian and the lack of biographical information meant…

The River Which Sleep Has Told Me, Ivano Fermini trans. Ian Seed, Odd Volumes of The Fortnightly Review, ISBN: 978-0999705827, £15.95

The Dice Cup, Max Jacob (Translated, with an introduction, by Ian Seed) Wakefield Press, 2022, ISBN 978-1-939663-83-6, $19.95

The Central Laboratory, Max Jacob, Translated, with an introduction, by Alexander Dickow, ISBN 978-1-939663-80-1, $22.95

The joys of reviewing translations from languages one less-than-half knows are boundless. This is especially the case when the originals are by a poet I’d never heard of before; but in the case of Ivano Fermini I expect I won’t be alone in that ignorance. In fact, so little is known about Fermini that I had a moment wondering if he might be an obscure member of Robert Sheppard’s European Union of Imagined Authors, but no, he’s real enough.
On the plus side, my sketchy Italian and the lack of biographical information meant…

See Saw: a Series of Poems about Art, Adrian Buckner, Leafe Press, 2023, ISBN 9781739721350, £8.00

Postcards to Ma, Martin Stannard, Leafe Press, 2023, ISBN: 9781739721343, £6.00

The Indescribable Thrill of the Half-Volley, Tim Allen, Leafe Press, 2023, ISBN: 9781739721367, £8.00

A Book of Odes, Alan Baker, The Red Ceiling Press, 2023, £8.00

The Ars, John Goodby, The Red Ceiling Press, 2020, £6.00

So, Rise, John Goodby, The Red Ceiling Press, 2023, £8.00

Woman on the Run, Carla Sarett, Alien Buddha Press, 2023, ISBN: 979-8374597981, £9.02

Noise, Jordan Davis, above/ground press, 2023, ISBN: 9781774602393, $5.00

The Swing of Things, Nada Gordon, Subpress, 2022, $10.00

Greedy Man: Selected Poems, Buck Downs, Subpress, 2023, $10.00

It’s time to celebrate once again the power of the pamphlet, those small windows into a body of work that might otherwise pass us by. Along with…