Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Wednesday, 20 December 2023

"Neptune's projects" by Rishi Dastidar (Nine Arches Press, 2023)

Poems from Magma, "Shoreline of Infinity" (an SF magazine), etc.

"Mermaid status" is a sonnet with mostly 8-syllabled lines.

I most liked the Neptune poems - "Species come, go,// get over yourselves. I bet the dinosaurs/ didn't want to disappear into kids' TV either" (p.31). I didn't get the "Crisis or War Comes" section. Nor do I get "Seasalter". The final "Neptune Clough" is fun.

Other reviews

  • Barque of frailty (Guardian poem of the week) (Barque of Frailty reflects both the doldrums of 21st-century pessimism underlying Neptune’s Projects and the irrepressible surges of creative energy that speed it over the waves.)
  • Kevin Gardner
  • Rupert Loydell (mostly unsubtle, preachy and simply trying too hard. ... wave after wave after wave of heavy-handed poems with a message ... The standout poem in the [‘Pretanic’] sequence is ‘The Brexit Book of the Dead’ )

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