"A Z-hearted guide to heartache" by Charley Barnes (V.press, 2018)

A pamphlet of poems by a woman with a PhD in Creative Writing. I don't get the title.

All the poems convey something, and they would all work live - indeed, I think many of them would go down excellently at readings. I'm not so sure they work together in a pamphlet though - the structures become recognisable. Poems (but are they poems?) like "Tips to fix a depressed person", "An apology for not looking disabled" and "A pocket-sized guide to hurting yourself" do little for me - I've seen much of the content before in how-to lists, and the rendition is rather listy too.

In "My therapist says", the narrator tells her/his therapist that they don't want to be the sort of person who starts sentences with "My therapist says" but that's how they start sentences with their partner to legitimise their claims. They're writing on walls again because there are important things to say. That's the prose summary - does the page-long poem say enough more? Among poems by other people it might stand out. Here the surrounding poems dilute its effect.

Some other poems are extended metaphors using a restricted (or "thematic" if you prefer) palette of themes. Reading the first few lines you can brainstorm, predicting rather too successfully what might come next, having trained yourself on previous poems.

Other reviews

• Emma Lee (“A Z-hearted Guide to Heartache” isn’t just a gentle wallow in post-heartbreak territory ... One poem, although making an important point, feels out of synch with the theme and subject of most of the poems. “An apology for not looking disabled,” ... It makes a vital point and is a good poem but doesn’t sit as well as, “Food is an important part of any relationship – Part Three” ... The situations appear specific to a certain relationship [] yet illustrate scenarios that are universally recognisable.)
• Daniel Burton