"Pain Songs" by Daniel Sluman (Nine Arches Press, 2026)

Poems from "Bad Lilies", "Ink, Sweat & Tears", "Poetry Wales", etc.

White space predominates - lines are very short; I think the longest stanza has 3 lines; there's lots of indentation, at tab intervals. The effect to me is like those melodramatic pauses on a reality show before the name of the week's eliminated person. I think all the c.1.5-page poems could be improved by being compressed onto a single page - or half-page. Only "Deserted carpark" is left-aligned - 21 couplets (cars?) and a final isolated line, all the lines about 5cm long.

Imagery abounds. For example, light spills, eddies and sputters. It's tilted over the world, it slips clean from the window, rolls over me. It pools into an open room. It makes for a pleasant read though I sometimes wondered if there was too much, as if the poet in a piecemeal way had replaced plain clauses by imagery even if the imagery didn't do much.

Here are some extracts -

• each night the bulb in the hallway/ sputters a ragged breath// until you twist it loose/ in your palm// pulling darkness through the flat (p.9) (or "each night the hallway bulb ..."?)
• the spray// of water lifting my car/ off the road// held momentarily/ neither in pain or at ease// between the ground/ & the air (p.16) (between the ground/ & the air? How?)
• I must ring the ambulance// & wait/ for the soft blue lights// to spill through/ the window & over// our sheets (p.18)
• MRI/ like a man about to travel/ a great distance// I slide my wallet/ & wedding band into the tray/ .../ before I am drawn/ into the open mouth// of the truth again (p.19)
• all night I've been waking/ to the sound of moths// striking the window// of our kitchen/ like scattered applause (p.24) (or "striking our kitchen window"?)
• the ceilings/ we are pressed beneath change// in aspect & colour// each evening they drop/ a little closer// in rooms that carry us/ from one year// to the next (p.37)
• time is always in deficit// catching up or catching on/ to something half-gone (p.38)
• we keep waking inside the notion/ of bodies in love// how one broken person// slides their tongue into another// until there is nothing left// of the sadness or shame/ that otherwise// divides them (p.60)
• the spasm of lightning// & thunder/ rolling its applause// over this half-decade/ we've built// our life into (p.64)