"The Estate Agent's Daughter" by Rhian Edwards (Seren, 2020)

Poems from Poetry Wales, The High Window, etc. Online is the title poem which starts and ends well - "The Estate Agent’s Daughter is sold as seen, semi-detached ... Unsuitable for first time buyers, no ongoing chain." - sagging in the middle. There are several magpie poems in the first section. "Something Else (Ten for a Bird That's Best To Miss)" is, like a title poem, an extended analogy, the cuckoo in the nest being a man who doesn't stay - "that piss wand harbinger blued-lined us the nuclear family ... Whatever is swelling in this brackish gut does not belong ... The hot water bottle has become my husband. I clutch it to my stomach like a lifebuoy ... Pyjamas rusted, white thighs spoiled ... Is it too late to call anyone or too early? I can never tell. Too dark for bird song and the water bottle is still warm"

The language can be lively even when the matter is plain - e.g.

• "Did I confetti sawdust on the planks, strew the shavings like morning grain for hens? ... ivied the fairy lights around the baroque mirror"
• "These fingers are chopsticks, decrypting the riddle of buttoning your school blouse".
• [of a wooden bench] "Long grasses have ambushed the concrete feet, jaded mosses upholster the wolfing rot"

3 poems ("Threnody" the weakest) use lists and anaphora to describe people -

• "David" I will miss ..."the revelation of that rare smile, teeth filling his face with a fervour like lifting the lid on a piano"
• "Threnody" Teach me to ... "have a garage, a catacomb for wine, fireworks of flowers bursting from the garden"
• "He is the kind of man" ... "who sheds his seatbelt like my bra strap, when compelled to reverse"

In "Gareth" the analogies are of mixed success - "His sunburst scalp, red as outback dust ... The broken capillaries of his cheeks are the whipping scars of a golfing wind"

In "Poems in the Dock" Her poems have been subpoenaed, summonsed by the ex-husband to give witness testimony against the mental health of their author ... Parents' Evening is called to the stand ... cross-examined on the intent behind her matricidal last line". I rather like it, though like her other poems of the style, it has too many weaker sections.

In "Describe The Pain" "I am failing her as the patient and the incidental poet as I ransack the gurney for the pitch perfect adjective ... Your sliding scale of one to ten is only an abacus of stamina"

I like "Identity Theft" - it's not too long. The later poems about separation ("Love and Taxes", "Handover") seem rather standard to me.

Other reviews

• Mat Riches (The rest of the first section covers a marriage and its dissolution along with the arrival of a child. ... Section two of the collection covers a great deal of ground and largely deals with identity and characters and/or places that you would assume loom large in the poet’s life. ... The theme of change continues in the third and final section of the collection which explores what I take to be a series of relationships.)
• Neil Leadbeater (In the second part, we meet work colleagues, family members and other characters, fictional or otherwise, in poetic portraits that are drawn from sharp observation. Among these poems I would single out a moving sequence that documents the experience of living with the pain of arthritis. ...The stand-out poem in this section is ‘Prodigal Audience’ ... The final section explores another series of relationships, some of which are not always complimentary and, at times, close to the bone.)