"Three poems" by Hannah Sullivan (Faber, 2018)

Three sections - "You, very young in New York" (impressionistic; long poem); "Repeat until time" (more like a collection of short poems with some philosophic intent); "The sandpit after rain" (narrator's father dying in hospital, she giving overdue birth on operating table). Much of it's over my head. Observations and anecdotes are mixed up, the odd phrase being interesting. There's quite a lot of Form - sonnets, etc. p.33 might be my favourite short poem - here's an extract -

Hugh Kenner believed in reasonable rhymes, Poets as scientists, discoverers of verities: Must/dust, shade/glade, thought/nought. In Warwickshire he saw an old man blowing a golden lad. 'We call them chimney sweepers when they go to seed.' Dandelions go blowsy and grey, get dandruff, The clean brush is matted with cobwebs. Children read the hours on dying flowers.

Much more often I'm puzzled - e.g.

It is July and the fog falls Like a solid, Like raisins in soda at elBulli. The world tastes of molecules, Palpitates in ozone. (p.26)

The final section's my favourite - more quotable lines, there's a narrative I understand, and (unlike the first section) the effects accumulate. Even then there's lots of (inevitable?) anaphora. Here are more extracts

Think of a children's sandpit after rain, Seaweed of twigs, blown Costa cups, a capsized sock, The filthy abandoned homes of snails ... The iron filings of the laughter lines unmagnetised, Blending with the bruises: What Crayola, what an Ash Wednesday for a face! ... Because when you return, there will only be a cubicle, And the nectarines on the hospital windowsill, So weeping would be for a penumbra of sentiment: The itch of a lost quotation in a book you cannot find ... Dull as any family business Dying is what the dead pass on The blur of oxytocin after labour is called joy, But it is only like the morphine someone dying dies enjoying

Other reviews

• Kate Kellaway (In the third and most obviously autobiographical poem, The Sandpit After Rain, a gorgeous wit alternates with melancholy as she juxtaposes the birth of her first son with her father’s death.)
• Ian Maxton (While the [first] poem successfully subverts the glamour of being “very young in New York,” it never quite delivers something totally new on that theme. Thankfully, the other two poems in the collection are more interesting)