"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. This 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)

Other reviews

• Emma Lee (All the poems in “Pain Songs” have an expansive, meandering across the page feel as if they have been written contemplatively and possibly in fits and starts as the poet returned to check that what is expressed uses the right words. The white space in and around the poems gives the reader space to pause and absorb the lines. Yet the poems are a coherent whole and do not feel fragmentary. )

"Absence has a weight of its own" by Daniel Sluman (Nine Arches Press, 2012)

Love and death are intertwined, both strongly evoked. In poems like "Dream" the stream of imagery reminds me of Eluard. The imagery's sometimes too disjoint to construct a narrative from; like strangers stuck in a lift, the images have to find a way to get on with each other, and they usually do. Many poems alternate 1-line and 2-line stanzas. In part One, the last line often arrives at a place rather than a conclusion.

Much of the imagery is mainstreamly attractive -

• "until clouds smooth tracing paper// over the moon. They pull apart/ but waiver [sic?] like magnets// too-close together" (p.16)
• "estates// where roads writhe in endless cul-de-sac" (p.16)
• "clasps the side/ of the girl's face like a just-spun globe" (p.31)
• "tourniquet this moment/ before it bleeds out" (p.43)
• "My mind settles like a spun coin// warbling to silence. The fresh intimacy/ of your sheets is a currency// I'll fritter on cheap flimsy words" (p.68)

More mysterious is "my midnight resurrections/ trampled lines as I chased myself// into the mirror, a shaking finger muddying/ the bottom of a bag" (p.24). And I'm not convinced that "God sees me// as a tiny pink coffin, wandering// from place to place, waiting/ to fall into the open earth" (p.54) merits all that page area. Why "from place to place" anyway?

In part Three, words can become objectified - "We tripped over commas all summer" (p.59), "hurling well-fed/ adjectives through the air" (p.63), "adjectives prickle/ her palms like rain" (p.64). With so many images, metaphors can become mixed. In "keeling port// down my throat like a ship in a bottle. Waiting/ for the sails to be raised in my ribs, flailing at x", "port" is busy, as are sonics ("sails/flailing"), and the ending's enigmatic (maybe it refers back to the title - "Kiss"). In "Evocation" "the clutch chokes" - I remember when cars had chokes.

In "Holiday" and "So this is what it feels like", the metaphor ratio's lower. The latter in particular is close to prose and has a plot I've heard before as sit-coms one-liners. At times, as on p.54, the clipped imagery lapses into a form of telegramese but for the most part the tight phrasing enhances the intensity. I'm rather surprised that he's not been in some bigger magazines. Early days yet I suppose.

Other reviews

• Adam Horowitz (Ink, Sweat and Tears)
• Any McCauley (It's evident too in his tactical deployment of the line break, so that where he places his absences is just as important as where he places his words).
• Emma Lee
• Sheila Black
• Nathan Ouriarch (Dead Ink)