"28 Portuguese Poets" by Richard Zenith (ed) (Dedalus, 2015)

In the introduction Zenith writes -

• [Melo Nato] broadly divided poets into bleeders, whose writing is an overflow of what they intensely feel, and crutch poets like himself, who write to compensate for what they lack in feeling (p.xvi)
• Mário Cesariny was the most prominent poet of Portugal's late-blooming surrealist movement, founded in 1947 ... he dedicated an entire book of poems to parodying and to deconstructing Fernando Pessoa and his heteronymic system (p.xx)

I liked "from The keeper of sheep" (Alberto Caeiro) and these extracts -

• The gods who gave us this path/ Of love that we call beauty/ Did not place it only in women/ Or only in fruit./ They also gave us the flower to pluck./ And perhaps we pluck with better love/ What we seek for using (Ricardo Reis)
• Around its silent centre/ The sunflower, falsely pleasing,/ Speaks, yellow and astonished/ By the black centre that's everything (Fernando Pessoa)
• I wake up from my dream .../ And I'm nothing (Florbela Espanca)
• I want to speak of houses as a man speaks of his soul,/ in the midst of a fire,/ next to the example of the wheat fields,/ learning the patience that watches them rise/ and die with a hint, a hint/ of beauty (Herberto Helder)
• sometimes... when I woke up/ it was because we'd arrived (Al berto)

"A little hope" by Ethan Joella

An audio book.

Freddie Tyler (female), 39, wants to be a writer. She has a daughter Addie, 6. She works as a seamstress 4 days/week for Darsie. Freddie's husband Greg, 39, is dying. He thought he'd eventually help Addie with her economics paper at 2am, that he'd play golf with her boyfriend.

Darsie wonders if she's too pushy a mother. When her husband died 10 years ago, her son Luke (about 20 then) got into booze and pills. His current girlfriend Hannah has pink hair.

Ginger, now a successful vet, used to like Luke. She still does. She wonders if he still sings on stage. She's been with her cute boyfriend Johnny for 2 years, but she has doubts. He has a son. She wonders whether to break up with Johnny. She looks for Luke. He dies in a car accident.

Kay and Alex (Greg's boss) have been together 50 years. Their son Benny died in a bicycle accident. Alex discovered that he'd had a daughter, Iris, by another women, Melinda. He told Kay, who didn't want to know. Alex kept in touch. Now when he's about to be a grandfather, Kay wants to meet the daughter.

When a student, Suzette returned from Finland after a week, bottling out of an opportunity. She's marrying Damon in 8 days and is having cold feet. Her older sister Liza died. Damon's friend Ahmed hasn't found love. He wants kids. He's falling for Ginger who's now broken up. He confesses his love for her.

When 4, Iris learned that her father Doug wasn't her real father. Her new dad Alex often visited. Now she's about to give birth. Dave, who she's only known a few months, is supportive. She wonders if she's making the same mistake as her mother, missing out on fun. The baby dies in the womb but she still has to give birth. She thinks about her half-brother Benny, dreams about him.

Suzette worries about her social services clients. When a girl who she's trying to help attacks her, Greg intercedes. He looks bad.

Ginger has found someone new - Ahmed. She visits Luke's mother, who's still deciding what to throw away. She's angry with Ginger, who saw things in Luke that she, his own mother, hasn't seen.

Freddie's accepted on the Iowa writing course. Greg has recovered.

An ensemble piece in a small American community. Over the course of a year there are births, marriages and deaths. Some people change greatly, some barely at all. I note that some reviews suggest it's more a story collection than a novel but chapters are chronological and are informed by each other, so I'd call it a novel. There's sadness in each story, the main Tyler story being the backdrop, an abiding source of hope.

Other reviews

• Kathryn Eastman
• Walter Cummins (With attention given to the complications of so many people, A Little Hope can be considered a novel in stories, but that category usually refers to a group of related pieces, each with its own resolution. In A Little Hope, the episode shifts from character to character depict a step in a life process, ongoing developments until the novel’s multiple conclusions, the various ways in which the characters reach an outcome to their pending uncertainties. The method is similar to that of multi-character, multi-plot dramas like Downton Abbey that juggle the issues of a group of characters, cutting back and forth episode by episode to advance the situations of each. The creative burden for the writer using this approach is to juggle a group of equally important characters, each with compelling personal story that coheres with that of the others for a larger significance. Joella succeeds.)

"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)

"Small Worlds" by Caleb Azumah Nelson

An audio book.

London. Steve, the first-person protagonist, is in the last week of school, soon to go to university. He plays trumpet in a jazz group with Adeline (Del) sometimes. He has an older brother Raymond. His parents came from Ghana. He's interested in his parents' past. In particular he'd like to know how his father coped with being 18.

His grades aren't as good as expected. He does business studies at Nottingham while Del does music in London. He gives up after a term, goes home. His brother moves out, having got his girlfriend pregnant. His father chucks him out because he's a disappointment to the family. He trains to be a chef. He likes Annie, likes who he is with her - open, vulnerable - but she goes to Brazil. Del and Steve meet again, admitting to love each other. She gave up music college because she wasn't learning anything. His mother dies of a heart attack. They'd been planning to go to Ghana together. He goes anyway, finds out more about his mother's early life, gets drunk.

Ray teaches him how to drive, saying that he thinks their father's struggling. Steve hasn't seen his father for a year, not since the funeral. He tried to make up. He goes through his father's old records. He wants to know how to choose what to remember.

At the end, "you" (his father) tells of the struggles in `1986 London. Prejudice, poverty and love.

He prefers "small worlds" - being with one person. The voice is poetic in the way that an 18 year old's might be. "light" triggers phrases like the repeated "we find a way to walk in the light they left behind" (of the dead). "space" (the word or concept) is added to many otherwise straightforward phrases to replace "moment", etc - "into that space where", "the way desire might spill into the space", "somewhere between content and melancholy", etc. Other examples of imagery and poetical phrasing include -

• "Del's lips hold a brief home on my cheeks and we pull each other close. We give no goodbyes, we know death in its multitudes"
• "It's funny what you remember, what palaces you make to store the fragments"
• "I am the beach disappeared by the tide, I am the breath between two notes"
• "the way thunder asks you to check the sky for rain"
• "June veers towards July"
• "light clasps onto her neck"
• "shyness visits upon us"
• "it was the time of day when the sun was leaving the sky"

At times I find it too lush, but maybe that's the point. However, the vocabulary is elevated too - he uses words like "discern" - and he's aware that he sometimes "mirrors" people's gestures.

Other reviews

• Colin Grant (Small Worlds is determinedly not another rehearsal of the kind of voyeuristic tabloid interest in Black people’s lives marked by violence and social deprivation; rather, it’s a love story. At least it sets out that way ... The novel would also benefit from a more generous inclusion of the rich hybrid of London/Ghanaian vernacular. One of the challenges Nelson wrestles with is how to make soap opera-ish everyday dialogue support the narrator’s intimation of the characters’ sophisticated interior lives ... Other pivotal scenes [] are bolted on, and read like a shortcut towards unearned gravitas. In a novel told in three sections, not only is there a mystifying shift in register from a gentle love story in part one to the opening of part two, [] but the narrator’s reflections on the ensuing conflagrations, though sincere [] are unconvincing.)
• jacquiwine (I also love how Azumah Nelson uses repetition throughout the novel ... A great example of this is the relationship between remembering and forgetting. At times, we want to forget things because they feel painful (e.g. ‘Right now, I don’t want to remember. I only want to forget’), while at other times, the emphasis shifts to remembering because we want something to endure (e.g. ‘Sure you’ll remember me?’ […] ‘How could I forget’). Other themes that Azumah Nelson continues to revisit include: the link between solitude and loneliness, which ultimately feeds depression; the sense of feeling trapped between a desire to cry and the inability to do so; and the need to ‘lean into’ life’s uncertainties, especially to access new possibilities.)
• Liz Dexter

"The House of Broken Bricks" by Fiona Williams

An audio book.

It's autumn. Tess, brought up in Lewisham of Jamaican ancestry, black, with an Architecture degree, is married to Richard (white, a small-scale farmer), who tempted her to live in the English village he was born in. Now she hates it. They argue a lot. They have twins, 10. Max is white and Sonny is black. Sonny, the only black in the school, is popular. Max, for reasons we're not initially told, needs counselling. He has identity issues - a section ends with Tess reading an illustrated bedtime book to him and he thinks "The last thing I remember is seeing Tom, completely covered in soot, frightened by the face looking back at him in the mirror.". Once a week Tess visits Cyril down the road. He has a terminal disease. Their boat, Bernadette, is kept by Cyril's jetty. Tess doesn't want to be reminded of it. Floods last for 3 weeks. Richard drinks and has unexplained absences.

They have a subdued Xmas. [Ah, I'm beginning to think that Sonny is dead. Max uses "we", and sees/hears Sonny. Tess reacts to what Max says Sonny's doing.] Tess and Max visit Tess's mother in London. Tess's older sister Peaches is there, with her son Nathan. Tess's mother, a widow, says she's going to sell up and move to Jamaica. Peaches tries to set Tess up with David. David gets her a job. She finds a place for Max for the next year in a London school. When they return home, Tess discovers she's pregnant - a forgotten drunken night with Richard. She keeps it secret. Sonny senses the foetus. Sonny says "I died on a summer's day" - a boating accident. Cyril dies. When villagers see that Tess is pregnant they see it as sign that Tess and Richard have got over their problems. Tess changes her mind about moving with Max to London.

Richard's been secretly preparing a polytunnel in their garden, with Jamaican plants and parakeets (naturalised, not foreigners). It's for her. And Cyril's left them money. Maybe it'll all work out.

Sections are from the 4 main characters' PoVs (Richard 3rd-person, the rest 1st). The boys (Sonny in particular) are thoughtful, observant, and poetic. They discuss their parents' relationship. It's not that the author is describing in adult language the insights and feelings that 10 year-olds have. They think and feel like adults even though they don't behave like them - "gossamer", "my quiet feet follow the rhythm of silence", "her voice sinks into me", "till darkness spilt". The status of Sonny is hinted at several times before it's revealed. I think Tess changes her mind/emotions too easily at the end.

Other reviews

• Stephanie Merritt (an elderly lady tells 10-year-old Max Hembry that the broken bricks employed to build his family’s cottage were also used as ballast at sea, “to weigh down them clipper ships sent to collect sugar from the Caribbean … yes, where your nana and grandad came from”. The symbolism could not be more explicit: that which appears damaged can, from a different perspective, offer stability.)
• aminasbookshelf (the standout element of this novel is how delicately she treats the themes. ... At times, I also wanted Tess and Richard to just split up and get a divorce, because it started to feel a tad repetitive. However, there were enough plot escalations to keep me interested)
• Gannah Elsoul (There is a childhood innocence to the children’s chapters, an overriding feeling anxiety in Tessa’s chapters, and a sense of isolation in Richard’s chapters. ... The story’s only weak point is that it becomes a little too repetitive, as the reader becomes the onlooker of a growing rift in Tessa and Richard’s marriage and parenthood. Although we root for some productive communication and intimacy between the married couple, the placid hum of their detachment continues)

"Choice" by Neel Mukherjee

An audio book in 3 parts.

Ayush (responsible for publishing literary books) and Luke (an economics lecturer) are a gay couple who've been together 20 years. They have Thai twins aged 8. Arguments about who does what at home become arguments about the significance of their professions. They analyse using the skills of their professions. Ayush feels he's the token diversity person at work. He gets an author's book of short stories accepted, but the author Emen Ohpee refuses to reveal anything about themselves. The book flops. Ayush shows the children a video of animals being slaughtered, hoping to make the children vegetarian. Luke eats meat. Ayush is obsessive about being green. Luke thinks that market forces should be made to work. Ayush tries to teach the twins about similies. He discusses with the children about how they can have 2 dads - do children at school comment on this? Without telling Luke, Ayush has taken £200k from the twins' education fund and giving it to charity. Luke is furious at first, then quickly forgives - he can soon recover the money by doing consultancy work. He wonders why Ayush is worked up by so many little things. Perhaps, he says to Ayush, there's one big thing that's behind it all - their relationship.

Emily, an academic, gets an Uber from a party. The driver is careless. He seems to knock over a child plus a dog. Next day the driver, Saleem, starts talking to her on the street. In bad English he says that he was driving, uninsured, to replace his brother who was badly ill. She wonders whether she had false memories of the ride. Then reports appear. She asks her friend Rohan (who teaches creative writing) whether she should report the hit-and-run to the police. She asks a colleague about Uber's business model. She has meetings with Saleem. He's a refugee from Eritrea by way of Sudan, Libya, Italy, etc. She accepts an invitation to visit his brother while he's having dialysis in hospital. She donates a kidney to Saleem's brother. She decides to do some creative writing. She shows Rohan her work. He's initially angry/jealous that she's so involved with this man - is she sleeping with him? They discuss the story's technicalities, whether it's fact or fiction [A story like this one is briefly mentioned in the first section - it's in the short story collection]

A family in a village 20 miles from the nearest road await visitors. They are given a cow by a charity. The husband is away for weeks at a time. The mother works as a maid 2 hours away. They don't eat cows, though people beyond the nearby border do. They have to find food for it. Neighbours are jealous and suspicious. The mother, Sabita, makes her 2 young children give up school (which wasn't much anyway - we're told about it) to look after the cow. The charity people from town come to check how things are progressing. The mother beats the children because they can't look after the cow (which eats a neighbour's banana tree). We briefly get the cow's PoV. The people from town give her supplies, information, and a mobile phone (so they can forewarn her of visits). Sabita has no electricity. She can't even afford a bucket. She wants money. They get the cow pregnant. Sabita's 8 year-old daughter takes over the housemaid role, becoming a live-in maid. They try to find customers for the milk, working out what to do with the surplus. The husband returns, taking the cow away to sell but he's killed and the cow stolen. [A story like this one is briefly mentioned in the first section - an episode in a book about third world economics]

There are longuers in every piece, points hammered home regarding tokenism, acting local and thinking global, economics vs emotion. The first story springs the surprise of the £200k donation, the second has the bigger shock of the kidney donation. The third begins with the surprise of the cow gift, then the phone. The final story's plot has few surprises - it's all downhill, with details. I don't think it justifies its length, but I've the same doubt about all the parts.

Other reviews

• Tanjil Rashid
• Abhrajyoti Chakraborty (Choice is undone by its third section ... For the first time in the novel, nuance is eschewed for a preachy, threadbare morality. When read after the two stories set in London, Sabita’s saga of unmitigated woe leaves you with a distressing question. Does Mukherjee really think the poor, and those living in the global south, have no inner lives to speak of?)
• Tabish Khair (While “choice” connects all three parts—they are numbered, not titled—of the book, there is nothing else in common between them, except the stony backdrop of “economics” and some slight echoes, the latter especially between I and II. Despite this, I incline towards the “novel” designation as the three parts are held together by a fierce act of concentration on the matter of choice.)
• Sanjay Sipahimalani (Do the three strings of Choice vibrate when placed next to each other, creating something more than the sum of their parts? Up to a point, certainly. ... However, the prose sometimes becomes overly didactic, especially in the first two sections. ... It ought to be pointed out that Mukherjee does try to pre-empt such criticism.)

"Lisbon poets" (shantarin, 2023)

A bilingual edition of poems by Luís de Camões (born 1524), Cesário Verde (born 1855), Mário de Sá-Carneiro (born 1890), Florbela Espanca (born 1894), and Fernando Pessoa (born 1888, writing as Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Capos and himself).

According to his introduction, Luís de Camões is "considered to be Portugal's national poet ... equal in status to Renaissance peers like Shakespeare and Dante".

Mário de Sá-Carneiro killed himself at 25. One of his poems ends with "A little more sunshine - and I would have been ember,/ a little more blue - and I would have taken flight,/ But I lacked that impulse to get there .../ If only I had remained where I was ..."

Florbela Espanca killed herself at 36. Her mother was a 15 y.o. housemaid when her boss made her pregnant. Espanca studied law - she was one of 7 female students at the university. She had 2 divorces and several miscarriages.

I struggled with most of these poems. My favourite poet of the bunch is Ricardo Reis, one of the Pessoa personae.