"Slide" by Mark Pajak (Cape, 2022)

Poems from the Guardian, LRB, The North, etc. There's a Bridport winner and 3 poems commended in the National Poetry Competition. The back cover doesn't hold back - Andrew McMillan says the book's chilling and tense, with acute precision; Carol Ann Duffy says the poems are robust and eloquent; Farley says they're precise and intense; Agbabi couldn't sleep, so strong was their visceral impact. Genius.

"After closing time" and "Thin" (consecutive pages), "Dare" and "Threshold" (consecutive pages) seem to be coasting - with so much white space the pages whizz by. There's some interesting imagery all the same -

• I put my cloth to the misty wineglass/ and twist the shine in like a lightbulb ("Crystal")
• a chimney hangs from the sky/ on a white string ("Spitting distance"). Alluding to Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto? ("factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke")
• in the sunk smoke of algae, sticklebacks scatter like a shoal of razors ("Tickling the canal")
• A shoal of minnows circles slow as a mirror-ball ("The Scream")

I like "Drift" (3 lines), "Open water" (6 lines) and "Mountain path", which describes a path in several ways ("This, walked into existence by those who came before, path ... This cannot be followed, only learned, path"). Shame about the layout. I like "The Tilt". "Slaughter-house worker at the public pool" isn't bad. What puts me off is that it's presented as 24 lines rather than 2 short paragraphs. And isn't "The Knack" prose disguised by line-breaks? p.46 seems weak.

The short lines, short poems, and blank pages make me wonder if a pamphlet of work is being stretched into a book. There's duplication too -

• And she asks him to zip the back on her dark dress./ Just this simple, intimate act// sealed up in the buzz of his thumb,/ as it trails a line of silver through black ("Silver")
• The delicate/ silver spine/ down her/ favourite/ back dress,/ how easily/ her other man/ splits it

I mostly like the poems I haven't mentioned, so it would have made an excellent pamphlet.

Other reviews

• Kate Kellaway (Pajak’s clarity is a treat – mystery exists without mystification. "The Tilt" is quoted in full)
• Ellen Harrold (There is a notable difference in his writing style when speaking in the first person about his experiences and the things he wrote from the imagination. This understanding makes the visceral pain in the poems authentic and powerful, and there were times when I found it difficult to continue reading. )