"The snow globe" by Jenny Pagdin (Nine Arches Press, 2024)

She got an Oxford University degree, then a Creative Writing Masters from UEA. Poems come from Magma, Wild Court, Stand, Interpreter's House, etc, with 2 poems commended/shortlisted in the Bridport. There are about 50 pages of poetry, which is rather short for a NAP book. There are 3 liners, a one-liner, bulletmarked lists, prose, redacted text, etc. No forms as such.

It was quite an easy read, poetically - if there were lines I didn't understand they were isolated, and didn't harm my appreciation of the piece as a whole. The poems I liked best were those (according to the acknowledgements) that others liked too, so maybe I'm on the right wavelength.

Many of the pieces are about childbirth and post-partum psychosis. There's a mix of approaches - the persona psychotic recounting sane events, the persona sanely recounting psychotic events and so on. I liked "Under the milk trance"- a dreamy poem with curds, tides and the moon. "Ursa Major" was a favourite. "In sickness and in health" shows how contrasting feelings can merge - "it barely matters what was meds, what was illness". "Metamorphosis" doesn't have enough that is new. "James and the catkins" is close to being an anecdote. "Milktooth" is rather anecdotal too, though there's a twist. "How to do your needlework" is the most ambitious (and longest) piece, which works for me.

There are quotable lines scattered through the book -

• "The dusk was doing that cocktail-of-pastels thing" (Heavenly)
• "and taste the small rain falling from my cheek/ and breathe the thin stars rising through my lungs" (Night crossing (ii))
• "I clutched my meds like a party bag" (Discharge day)

Other reviews

• Hilary Menos (‘Houses’, probably my favourite poem ... Many would prefer to keep such intimate details private, and I sometimes found myself feeling uncomfortable reading them. ... And how might the child, as an adult, react to reading it?)
• A.R. Arthur (motifs including the use of juxtaposing the dark and light, the sunny and hoary to create contrast that serves to affirm the ups and downs of recovery, mental illness and finding peace and love amidst the bleakness)