Poems from her previous book (which was shortlisted for the Forward and Aldeburgh prizes) have won the Arvon competition, etc. A poem from this book was in the Spectator and another came 2nd in the Hippocrates Prize.
The book starts with "Sunshine" - 39 8-lined stanzas, all lines about half the page width. The narrator's the much younger female lover of a male film director. After 5 years together and no precautions there are no children, but there's a film, "Sunshine", at Cannes. The ending is "now we are too old/ for anyone to make a film/ of our lives, now all that's left/ of us, of that time, is Sunshine". No.
Next is "Nothing Else" - 11 6 lined stanzas, all lines about half the page width. I'm still not convinced.
"The Doggy Bazaar, or How We Lost Your Place in the Radiology Queue" is 7 5-lined stanzas then a couplet, the lines nearly full width. It starts with "At the final roundabout you say 'See the Premier Inn?/ People come from the Isle of Mann for radio therapy/ and stay there. It's only a few minutes a day, radio.'/ I look at the bank of dull blue windows, full of people/ who are tired, and frightened, and a long way from home.". The patient is knitting babywear for a baby she'll never see standing. At the end she says to the radiologists who recognises her "'I'm sorry I won't be seeing you again, after today./ But thank you for your help. Everyone is so kind.'". It's short prose! Moving, though some readers might feel it tugs too hard at heart strings. I don't get the line/stanza breaks.
"Hay" is 14 lines. It's not quite laid out as prose - some lines are a word or so short. It's my favourite piece so far. "Sweetheart is 14 lines too - 2 stanzas, the first an octet.
I like "On Cutting" - Red Riding Hood, rushing through the wood to seek safety, keeps scratching herself on brambles - a map.
"Lucky Stones" is built around a good enough idea, but there's too little for an 8/6 pseudo-sonnet.
I like parts of "The Not-Parents" and some of the details in "Conk".
I like the idea of "The Kiss". Again, the format is distracting - needlessly obscure.
On the back cover Ian Seed writes about "a series of brilliantly-crafted octets" in "Sunshine". Kate Clanchy's comments suggest that the poem about being an artist's model was based on fact.
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