"Continuous Present" by D.A. Prince (New Walk Editions, 2025)

A pamphlet of poems from Stand, The North, Alchemy Spoon, etc.

I went to a car festival once, with fields of Cortinas, Morris Oxfords, etc - cars loved by their owners as much as any Ferrari is. This poetry collection has a similar approach. The first poem thanks Marianne Moore "for sparking a search for the exceptional everywhere ... in the foxed mirror of today, inside the relentless weight of my own hours" - bus trips, train journeys, broken bread machines, weeds growing in guttering, Keep Calm Eat Biscuits mugs, staying on for the credits.

"Routine Appointment" is the type of poem she's perhaps most famous for. The persona is attending an appointment at the hairdressers. It starts with - "Sitting under the scissors, I enquire/ about her heart. Oh, fine, she clips,". We learn, as the persona looks at her back view in mirrors, that the hairdresser has a CT span appointment - in ten months. It ends with "And yes, her dog's OK. We're good/ at surfaces, at hearts, the brighter side.".

"The Alibi Cupboard" has a less clear plot. A child (you) "Just past the crawling stage" pulls itself up at a cupboard. "You want to slip the catch,/ play with the alibis your future holds - ... missed buses ... homework-eating dogs ... grandmother's ten funerals". "your parents are ... not yours but cuckoo-substitutes, the reason everything goes wrong." At the end you are "already/ learning, clutching at the lies that lie/ before you, all your lovely other lives."

Though mostly free verse there's a sestina ("The Road Abroad"), some end-rhyme ("Weeds" is "abab"), and pseudo-sonnets ("Shades" is nearly "abcd abcd abcd abcd xx", "Staying on for the credits" is 8-6 without rhyme).

Other reviews

• Jonathan Davidson (these are not showy poems and although they feel as though they have come directly from a life lived, they almost always look outwards, look closely at others, noticing pertinent details)
• Kate Noakes (These are precise lyrics with not a word out of place. Prince is a consummate poet with keen observational skills and formal dexterity.)
• Rowena Sommerville
• Emma Lee (Through “Continuous Present”, D A Prince effectively presses pause, giving readers space to dwell in the moment. To create a period of time to focus on word choice or study the paint strokes, to see how small details accumulate and cohere into a complementary whole.)