Pulsar Poetry Magazine

Book & Booklet Reviews

Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 50, September 2008

Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below

Sympathetic Magic, poems by Brian Fewster. An A5 size perfect-bound paperback book with a full colour cover and 92 pages. Published on 31^st January 2008 by: Poor Tom’s Press, 89a Winchester Avenue, Leicester, LE3 1AY. ISBN 978-0-9543-3715-5 price £6.00.

There are many powerful poems in this collection, the rhyme and metre flow without effort, the rhythm sometimes so strong one feels compelled to read a poem aloud. Brian uses many poetic forms, sonnet, sestina, villanelle amongst them, each form appearing the right one for the poem within it. Often the writing is sad, as in ‘Three poems for Jane,’ which are heart-moving. Others are suffused with humour. There are lines of particular beauty, as in ‘Moorland’…

‘Clouds disintegrate,

sliding over the hill’s edge

into the sky’s lake.’

I turned to the title poem several times, something in it eluded me – is it about the search for order in a chaotic world?…

‘By now the past has generated more

thick sheaves of junk to bin and guilt to store.’

It would seem early man had more imaginative ways of dealing with life’s pressures and disappointments…

‘…means

of filtering their words through magic screens.’

The poet’s erudition, his knowledge of art, science, philosophy, come across strongly, a metaphysical quality is woven seamlessly into the poetry. An intriguing collection, making one think and ponder on the diversity of life, love, and everyday scenes. Kate Edwards

from the field book . . . a collection of poems from Carol Thistlethwaite. A perfect bound book, with a full colour cover and 100 pages. Price £4.99 plus p&p or £1 e-Book. Publisher: BeWrite Books UK, 32 Bryn Road South, Wigan. Lancs. WN4 8QR; www.bewrite.net ISBN 9781905202768 paperback 9781905202775 e-Book.

These poems are an adventure, an excitement of birds, a journey through fields and woods, across marshland and sea - shores. Afterwards, you will be glad you set out, got your feet wet in long grass and rock pools, perched on cliff tops, you’ll see birds with a new way of looking. You’ll know their ways, their being, their similarities and differences, as diverse as humans. Next time you see a swallow, you will recognise it in a different way…

‘…Excited chatter

Saharan sun-scorched faces…’

It reminds one of how far they have come,

‘tracing the curves of earth,

weaving lovers’ lace

through the skies.’

Watching rooks in tree tops…

‘To know the thrash and thwack

of life all-precarious.’

Carol uses words in a way that gives us new insights into the avian world, the poems are alive with discovery, giving our perceptions a keener edge. Even if, like the poet, (a long time member of the RSPB) you are a dedicated birdwatcher, these poems will expand and broaden your horizons by the sheer diversity and vitality of the descriptions and language. The bird’s various habitats are searchingly portrayed, how they live, survive, and have their being is lovingly depicted, on some pages the arrangement of words portrays the birds in flight, on others, we can hear their scrawls and cries and rustlings, and we learn more from this than from any number of technical books.

‘black-headed gulls crowd in,

over-dipped in ink,

web-feet-first,

blotting the page.’

Kate Edwards

Virtual Eden, poems by Pat Earnshaw. An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 32 pages. Published in year 2008 by: Gorse Publications, P.O. Box 214, Shamley Green, Guildford, GU5 0SW. ISBN 978-0-9524113-8-5. Price £4.50 post free UK.

To fully appreciate this little book, one needs to put aside a few grown up attitudes about imagery. An eight-year-old child knows that inanimate objects like tombstones and dark rooms actually can and do talk to us. We can and in fact often do slip into reveries and revisit past experiences and become true artists, invisible observers of others’ and of our own behaviours. The book is a gathering of poignant reflections that transport the poet back to another time within her childhood. The memories are as beautiful as they are painful, but they do not always describe an Eden. My favourite poem, and one I think that must be absorbed before reading the rest, is “Dredging for Memories,” which prepares the reader for what is to come: “Lost in a wilderness of fantasy/ mismatched with memory/ I tuck myself into a crevice/underneath the torrent of a waterfall, and safe from ambush,/ am content to watch the world....” Harold S. Webster

Distant Close, poems by Will Daunt. An A5 size perfect bound book with a two colour cover and 64 pages. Published on 14^th February 2008 by Lapwing Publications, c/o 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast, BT14 8HQ. ISBN 978-1-905425-73-0 www.freewebs.com/lapwingpoetry/ and e-mail lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com Price £6.95.

This one will appeal to the resolute reader. It’s not easy. It’s not meant to be easy. Reading it left me exhausted. I can’t imagine the effort required to write it. Daunt’s regular readership will know what to expect in the way of puns, metaphors and word tricks. The rest of us will have to dig-in, prod and poke. It’s a bit like cleaning your ears. Something will emerge eventually. Perhaps grit? Incidentally, I read the book to disintegration. It simply fell apart in my hands.

The title piece Distant Close comprises the last 15 pages of the book and is a kind of a nosey parker’s cul-de-sac guide going from no. 1 to 13 and then back down the other side from 12 to 2. Eavesdropping at 13a: Aviary produces the following:

Bird song? I’ll give you bird song

‘til you’re sick of twittering, Look –

much better, listen. I’ve reversed

this cage called home, culled half

the usual clutter, made each room

a gaping prison…

The first part of the book is basically an assortment of postcards and paraphernalia from bardic travels.

In Stirling Efforts

…voices diverge

like words in a wilderness –

grit fills the vacuum

Poetry with grit. That sums it up nicely. Gwilym Williams

The Magnificent Guffaw, poems by Richard Wink. An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 40 pages. Published in year 2007 by erbacce press publications, Liverpool, UK. Cover design, editing and typesetting by Alan Corkish. ISBN 978-0-955754-8-8 www.erbacce.com ¤5.50 $3.99 E-mail: aprilmaymarch777@yahoo.co.uk

I really enjoyed reading The Magnificent Guffaw. It tenderly describes the modern day madness of human nature and what it is like to live in a city in these times. I enjoyed the humour and tenderness contrasted with the mud of everyday routine and the mundane things of life. I liked the concise way the poet delivers his voice of urban tales and hope. I sat and read many of the poems out loud in my garden, (the neighbours probably thought I was bonkers!), but it seemed the right way to absorb the words. I loved the way he describes the British culture of booze and nightclub-worship with an enigmatic vision - “On the dance floor they question my sexuality / Sure I can smile honey” – it reminds me of the eternal hangover of my drinking days.

I thoroughly enjoyed this chap-book and am resolved to read more of Richard Wink’s work. Some of my favourites were: I Feel Mysterious Today – “There is a weird smell coming from the fridge/ as I walk through the door/ the cat licks its balls/ in a touching display/ on my returning” and Guts Up – “On occasion you can confuse them by playing a mental from the local hospital/ chuck a rotten cabbage/ scream like a dirty filthy banshee/ By this rule of thumb/ madness conquers fear”. Neil Francis Brooks

Sunflower Equations, poems by June English. A slightly larger than A5 size book with a full colour cover and 76 pages. Published during year 2008 by Hearing Eye, Box 1, 99 Torriano Avenue, London, NW5 2RX. ISBN 978-1-905082-34-6 www.hearingeye.org Price £6.95. e-mail: books@hearingeye.org

Sickness, abuse, infidelity beat like hammers throughout the poetry of June English. And if this isn’t enough we can add the difficulties of growing up in wartime Britain, clutching our ration books and gasmasks, peering fearfully down the alley where baby Rosie died ‘while Mummy danced with G.I. Joe.’ Fairy tale endings also seem to be excluded. Peace, marriage and a new life in a new and distant country offer little in the way of sanctuary with the ‘silent months of snow,’ the ‘talk about bullies and bond slaves’ and where ‘my blouses cover the blows.’ Harrowing stuff, a view of a life on the margins of the unbearable. But in the midst of all this pain there are glimpses of a gentler existence: the uncle who makes violins sitting ‘cross-legged, penknife in raw-boned sailor’s hand,’ and perhaps finding love in ‘Sonata’ and the ‘summer nights we’d sneak away’ to where your ‘hands worked rhythmically in tune – to rouse latent sonata chords in me.’

After reading her poems I’m reminded of past childhood visits to the fairground, of being thrown around and tossed through the air, half frightened to death but wanting desperately to go back and experience it all again. John Plevin

The Cast-Iron Shore, poems by Pat Jourdan. An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 40 pages. Cover design, editing and typesetting by Alan Corkish. Cover painting by Pat Jourdan. Published by erbacce-press publications, Liverpool, during year 2008. Price £4.00 www.erbacce-press.com ISBN 978-0-9555754-9-5

The city of Liverpool provides a backdrop to most of Pat Jourdan’s poems, whether a winter scene in ‘February Sundays,’ . . . ‘a surprise Liverpool on fresh paper,’ and almost obligatory, ‘Ferryboat to Birkenhead,’ or, The Cast-Iron Shore.’

In the title poem she describes the broken remnants lying around on the shore, ‘the fag-ends of industrial days,’ and goes on throughout the book depicting the remnants of her childhood and later life.

There are many focal points here of remembered incidents: the German prisoner-of-war catching the girl’s eye in ‘After War,’ the soldiers and the aid worker striking a contrast in ‘Shannon Café,’ and even the brother ‘his internal landscape changed from ours,’ marked forever by unmentioned experiences in Afghanistan, (That Far-Away Look).

The poet’s voice here is confident and experienced, but even this does not protect her from the occasional strained image, such as ‘Apricot skies dashed with sparks – like an orgasm gone wrong,’ or ‘the dotted chewing-gum stars on the pavement.’ But these are minor sins when measured against the image of ‘Kathleen Ferrier, Telephonist,’ penned in by the rules while her voice soars in her head.

Here and there, the reader comes across some vivid images, ‘the surge of the tide,’ and ‘the smell of salt-charged air,’ (Shoreline), or in ‘Heresy,’ describing the baby’s eyes ‘bullet-blue from heaven, dropped sky dolloped into skin.’

All-in-all an interesting and wide-ranging collection. Ingrid Riley

Book & Booklet Reviews

Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 49, March 2008

Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below

I Went With Her, poems by Alan Hardy. A slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with a three colour cover and fifty two pages. ISBN 978-1-905126-98-9. Published in year 2007 by Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY. poetrymonthly@btinternet.com UK price £5.50

This is Alan Hardy’s second collection and some of the poems have been previously published in, as he puts it, ‘the usual suspects.’ For me, ‘Night-Porter’ stands out, head and shoulders, from the rest of the material. . .

. . . you will understand that seedy look and smell

of interrupted sleep,

slightly querulous avoidance of eyes,

in the fidgety night-porter’s crumpled shame

having to make a living waiting for others

to deign to ring a bell

in his beaten-down eyes,

you will see the fervour and hot-headed contempt

that massacred the Tsar and bred a coup,

The book, on the whole, is a little less interesting than the above poem would suggest and one gets the impression that the poet is sometimes lacking inspiration, for example there are a couple of poems concerning flies, another on wasps. This made the reading slightly hard going; however, I was considerably cheered by the Pythonesque gem on the rear cover, ‘. . . He won second prize in The Hastings International Poetry Competition 1994. ’ Dick Stewart

Sound Signals Advising of Presence, poems by Peter Hughes. An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and seventeen pages. Published in year 2006 by infernal methods, Quoybow, Stormness, Orkney, KW16 3JU. ISBN? UK price £3.00.

Even if one has never been to a Scottish island, these poems wholly convey the feel and atmosphere of such a place – the lost and lonely shores, the slow tracking of time, as though the tides, the sands, the wind, move everything to a rhythm of their own.

A phrase that caught me, referring to ‘we & the strange house’, was ‘that resound to little adaptations & imagined trespasses.’ (The ampersands are the poet’s own.) The house, what he sees from and around it, the sea, tides, are the recurrent themes, uninhabited buildings, a deserted peninsula, loss and loneliness drift through the pages, but hope as well, - ‘the most stunning sights are the normal daily occurrences.’ The words are like a reverie floating through the poets consciousness, like driftwood cast on a deserted beach

Perhaps one should never ask what a poem is ‘about,’ but I would have liked to be a bit more certain that this was a return, that a house was being restored, or did I get that completely wrong? ‘Green hill,’ ‘green doors,’ ‘an unblocked chimney,’ ‘undressed walls,’ all speak of a place, a time, a moment in a landscape, hinting at lives led within it, in an arresting collection of images. Kate Edwards

In the beginning was the song, poems by Glenys Jones. A slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with seventy four pages and a full colour cover. Published during year 2007 by: Matador, 9 De Montfort Mews, Leicester, LE1 7FW. E-mail: books@troubador.co.uk Web site: www.troubador.co.uk/matador ISBN 978-1905886-975 UK price £6.99.

The book’s cover gives the lie to the old cliché that you can’t judge a book by its cover - the sunlight on the mountain, the soft blue sky, the rugged rock, the out of focus gorse, the withered grass, the undersized tree reaching valiantly skyward all serve to illustrate exactly what’s in store.

Glenys Jones is the time-honoured reluctant poet finally pressed into the limelight by family and friends; a kind of Welsh Lao Tzu at the gate you could say, but it’s all very well done and often done with a light touch. The collection takes its title from the poem beginning with the following lines:

Before we spoke, we sang

With the birds in the trees

The wind on the lake

This hints at transmigration; an ancient Celtic belief system and this kind of thing fits well as I’ve hinted to Jack Tait’s cover image. Jones is less happy with modern hustle and bustle. Here’s Epitaph: One in full:

A womb

A tomb

And in between

Life

A crowded room

Full of shouting

Where no-one speaks

Aunt Mabel, 90, one of the original conspirators, must be delighted with her niece. Gwilym Williams

Iota 78, 2007/02. Poems and reviews from various contributors. A perfect-bound book with a two-colour cover and fifty six pages. Editors: Bob Mee and Janet Murch of Ragged Raven Press, 1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Warwickshire, CV37 0LR. E-mail: iotapoetry@aol.com + web address www.iotapoetry.co.uk ISSN 0266-2922 Year sub £12.00 UK, rest of the world £18.00. Individually £3.00 per copy, UK.

You will not like all of the poems in this slim edition, perhaps not even most, (one might say the same about Whitman's "Leaves of Grass”); but if you read "Iota" carefully, you will come to the conclusion that, whatever its shortcomings here and there, this is an important gathering of work after all. It is, I think, a platform on which aspiring poets may stand and build intricate images of original thought that tweak the mind in new and refreshing ways. Just about the time you are ready to dismiss it all as vague prose in short lines, you come across poems that cut deep, that touch a chord and knock the smugness out of you.

All in all, considering the publication's purpose, the editors have chosen well. Harold Webster

A Real Man, poems by David Savoury. A perfect-bound book, slightly larger than A5 size, with a three-colour cover and ninety four pages. Published during November 2006 by Paula Brown Publishing, 26 Uplands Road, Drayton, Portsmouth, PO6 1HS. Information via e-mail: paulabrownpublishing@btinternet.com ISBN 9781905168125 Price?

David Savoury’s ‘A Real Man’ represents some twenty years of work, but for all that it’s not always an easy read. The publisher’s introduction claims that the poetry ranges ‘from the surface of a man’s skin’ to ‘the boundless perspective of the cosmos.’ Quite a stretch. Helpfully the poems are grouped into broad and ambitious themes: self and society; the fragility and wonder of humanity; and the dichotomy between flesh and spirit. All good subjects for the poet. Self and a rather bleak view of society are present in ‘The Suburbs’ where ‘refuse congregates’ in black sacks ‘like so many mourners.’ In the poem ‘Beach’ humanity is reflected by love turning towards sleep ‘leaving me in our darkness.’ Our insignificance in the wider scheme of things is measured in the poem ‘Growing Desert’ addressed to God where man is just ‘a grain of sand… dead in a boundless vacuum.’ I found the poems in ‘A Real Man’ grew on me. A slow process but worth the effort. John Plevin

Waves, 2007: 37^th Annual Anthology of the Society of Civil and Public Services Poetry Workshop. Poems displayed in an A5 sized stapled booklet with a two-colour cover and 28 pages. Membership is open to anyone who works or has ever worked for a civil or public service organisation. Chairperson/Editor: Liz Rowlands, 19 Arkley Court, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 2YR. E-mail: pw@gothicgarden.freeserve.co.uk ISSN 1475-144 Price £2.50, includes post and packaging.

This is a delightful anthology from the above named society. The collection covers a wide and varied range of subjects. In ‘The Upstairs Cat,’ Muriel Stammers cleverly evokes the nature of cats, threatening menace to other animals, but seeking the favour of human beings who are a useful source of food and admiration.

More serious themes are also chosen. Mike Boland in ‘Among the rocks of Albion,’ offers a romantic view of Britain’s past, “we are the land; locked into a grid of unseen power / that webs across the hills, woods, rivers/earthing us among the rocks of Albion.”

Angus Livingstone in ‘The Potter,’ describes how a routine activity gradually takes over the potter who dreams of producing the perfect pot, “and when it’s thrown and only then/she’ll know time and pain and cold/but she will smile before she sleeps.”

There are many more themes in this collection which should be mentioned, in particular the various evocations of nature, such as ‘Suburban Summer,’ by Terry Rickson, or ‘End of Summer,’ by Terry James. This is an anthology which has something to offer everyone and stirs the reader’s imagination throughout. Ingrid Riley

Minor Yours, poems by Peter Hughes. An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 11 pages. Published during year 2006 by Oystercatcher Press 4 Coastguard Cottages, Lighthouse Close, Old Hunstanton, Norfolk, PE36 6EL. ISBN 1-905885-008, price £3.00.

Minor Yours; (Mine or Yours?) poses just that dualistic question, as do the poems in the slim volume, with interesting cover illustration by the author (which, in colour therapy terms, would show that the artist had issues with gender, psychic stability and direction ….) The poems start to confirm this, moving from: ‘I’m a charcoal sketch/ a self portrait in an unframed mirror/ a subterranean rumour/ a trickle of coal dust……’ to ‘purposeful steps/ usually kill an insect or two/ you can hear them in the attic/ or in the alley down the side of the house/ maybe it’s a neighbour’s dog a fox/ or some less easily named/ nocturnal presence,’ then, with more definition: ‘time to clean out the pipes &/ listen to the dripping in the cellar’, confirming the duality: ‘pros and cons light and dark/ your turn my turn’, ‘vicious and sympathetic by turns’, but (don’t worry about it!) ‘where no-one is watching or measuring/ setting you up to shoot at the target of yourself/’ while the last poem has more visual structure, the message is still lost, as it feels, is the poet: ‘though the dogs are waiting/ with reflections in their eyes/ for someone to tell them/ this is not happening/ someone will come back.’ Of course they will. And it’s important to say it when you feel it. And paint it. Wonderful words. Janie Thomas.

Book/Booklet Reviews

Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 48, September 2007

Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below

The Mansion Gardens, poems by Alan Morrison. A slightly larger that A5 sized perfect-bound book with a three colour cover and 71 pages. ISBN 1-905168-11-X. Published during year 2006 by Paula Brown Publishing, 26 Uplands Way, Drayton, Portsmouth , Hampshire, PO6 1HS. paulabrownpublshing@btinternet.com www.paulabrownpublshing.com Price ?

Alan Morrison, the man who *re-jigged Under Milk Wood to much acclaim, is an out of the ordinary writer. His work abounds with strangely named characters like Short Shanks the Shopkeeper and The Turpentine Prophet.

The poetry in here will appeal to many a reader’s socialist feelings and includes a selection of Morrison’s epigrams, or as he refers to them - overbs. There are also lengthy pieces like Rats, Cats and Kings, a homage to Orwell in Catalonia and a number of poems written in a kind of Joycean verbalesque manner.

If you think you’d enjoy a mulligatawny of poetry served up, not by a flyblown waiter, but by a creative and thoughtful poet seeking to enrich the language, both with and without pub beer wisdom, then this handsome 172-page volume could be just the thing for you.

Footnote: * re-jigged - in the sense that an old boat (or idea) is equipped with a new sail. Gwilym Williams

Poems by Soran Hassan. An A5 size, perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 48 Pages. ISBN 0-953681-7-0. Published during year 2004 by: Writers Without Borders, 22 Margaret's Grove, Harborne, Birmingham, B17 9JH. Price £3.99.

Wandering and searching for meaning in what must have been a very alien world, Soran finds a universal point of reference – the many faces of nature. He sees the flowers growing, blooming and dying, ‘a wind rises / scatters the butterflies . . . nothing new in the garden.’ Soran uses nature repeatedly in his poems as a means of conjuring up ‘the world beyond boundaries,’ the life which he lost.

Aspects of the poems are underlined by drawings which echo ‘Guernica’ with their evocation of fractured reality. Soran is trying to resolve his own devastating experiences, to cope with ‘the hugeness of suffering . . . to open the door to a new philosophy,’ – however difficult that may be, ‘but one door will open / the sun, the seas, birds, all things will enter / and one way will lead to felicity,’ (Sent to Coventry). The poet himself, ‘looked for a new land / where your dreams would not be slaughtered.’ The destination, Birmingham, might seem to us to be near farce. But for Soran the city is not loaded with the baggage of associations – it offers a new perspective on life.

These poems portray a world we can hardly imagine, and we can only marvel that the poet has taken the vocabulary of his second language and approached it in an original and fruitful way, ‘under the canopy / of refuge poetry.’ Ingrid Riley.

The Triad, a collection of poems by Charles Portolano. An A5 size stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 38 pages. ISBN 0-9779035-9-1. Published during year 2006 by: RWG Press, P.O. Box 858, Rockford Il 61105, USA. Price (USA) $6 (includes the cost of postage). Copies may be obtained from: Charles Portolano, P.O. Box 17205, FountainHills, Arizona, AZ 85269-7205, USA. Also view web: www.thesouldecision.com E-mail: angeldec@hotmail.com

What do Americans think about America? There are probably a million points of view, but in Charles Portolano’s ‘The Triad’ this particular American seems somewhat disillusioned with a society caring only for what we can hold in our hollow hands. A similar message comes through in ‘Cutting across Kansas’: harangued by hand-made signs telling him abortion is murder, the car driver is more concerned with the thought that war is murder. The car-driving poet in ‘Cutting across Kansas��, perhaps like the rest of us, doesn’t like tailgaters, in particularly those driving a huge black Hummer fast like a black hole which when it finally overtakes presents him with the rear bumper sticker Honk if you love Jesus. But the pellets of protest are tempered with gentler thoughts: the old man in ��Haunting’ walking the length of an old dry-docked sailboat his hand never leaving her side; and in ‘Gypsy Fever’ the flamenco dancers laughing loud loving life.

There must be room for protest. Those of us alive in the sixties will always remember the power and impact of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War��. There is much in the world today that demands our concern, but the voice of protest seems strangely muted. Perhaps in his way Charles Portolano is doing his bit to remind us that we need from time to time to prod ‘The Hornets’ Nest’ and be ready to die. John Plevin.

Homing, poems by Philip Ramp. An A5 size perfect-bound book with a two colour cover and 88 pages. ISBN 0-944550-72-X. Published during year 2005 by Pygmy Forest Press, 1125 Mill Street, Springfield, OR 97477, USA. $12.00 U.S. Copies may be purchased at $12.00 from: P.O. Box 34 Aegina Island, 180 10, Greece.

These words are a form of poetry that I feel drawn to: ‘Emotional but without histrionics, wilful but lacking the mayhem of dream; conclusiveness of falling, the insistent plea of logic in its refrain.’ They express the prosaic magnetism of someone who knows he’s not there yet, but is looking forward to the journey, enjoying the struggle of looking at the map and trying to decipher the way while looking up at the sunset feeling wistful in his head as well as warm in his heart, perhaps because of the company he keeps. In his ‘Sometimes it Seems like Evening has the Answers he says it differently: ‘as always, the expected time of arrival/depends on when you left.’ But has its own contradictions and these physical/metaphysical ponderings about nature in its many forms are what make the joy of rhythm and excitement of unravelling the thread of words forming the form, shaping the shape of his poems. Janie Thomas

Mackerel Wrappers, poems by Martin Cook. An A5 size stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 36 pages. Published 24^th March 2007 by HappenStance, 21 Hatton Green, Glenrothes, Fife, KY7 4SD. UK delivered price £4.00. ISBN 978-1-905939-05 3. Further information from e-mail address: nell@happenstancepress.com and www.happenstancepress.com

An entertaining and clever collection, with surprising insights and often a deep seriousness almost concealed by the dryness and humour.

“Herring Gull at Mwynt” becomes

‘…a High Court Judge,

considering my bribe of bone,

and whether to cull me.’

Several poems are about friends and characters he has known. “Mildred” discards her wheelchair,

‘…striding out….

…bullying the countryside.’

Clarence, Danny, George, Lillian, all come to life with their quirks and foibles revealed to us in very wry, often sad, comments. The Title poem tells of eating fish and chips ‘in a polystyrene tray’ as the poet regrets the passing of ‘unhygienic newspaper’. He ends by describing how the Romans wrapped their fish in ‘old poems (or even discarded prose) ‘and how their empire lasted a thousand years.’ “A Christmas Letter” is a delightful ‘reverse take’ on the Round Robins so often received at that season.

This collection brings many a smile, and sometimes dampens the eye, leaving an impression of a poet at ease with his words. Kate Edwards

Book/Booklet Reviews

Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 47, March 2007

Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below

Poems About Places by Peter Naldrett. A slightly larger than A5 sized perfect-bound book with a two-colour cover and 45 pages. Published in year 2006. ISBN 978-1-4116-4072-6. Price? Available via: www.lulu.com or via Blackwell's, www.blackwell.co.uk. E-mail: peter.naldrett@talk21.com

As stated clearly on the tin, these poems are about places. From Sydney to Vienna, Belfast to Brixton they’re all here and a very impressive travel journal it is. The blurb on the rear cover makes it pretty clear that these journeys have already formed the basis of much writing. I mention this because Peter uses a very factual and dead pan style for a poet and a teacher. Some of the endings of the poems left one hanging in mid air.

Avignon

I knew this place was in a song,

But I thought it was by Bryan Ferry.

No, no, no, that’s Avylon

But I stood on the famous bridge, anyhow.

Cold, cold, blowy and cold.

Universal culture drags me in McDonalds

Because toilets are free and clean.

And they even serve beer in this one.

That’s where I am now.

I am not at all sure that the romantic in me wanted to know that there is a McDonalds near ‘Le Pont D’Avignon,’ and of course, Bryan Ferry’s song is Avalon not Avylon but I strongly suspect that our teacher poet knows this and is secretly smiling whilst running his nails down the blackboard. Cunning. Dick Stewart

Orpheus in the Park, poems by Rose Solari. A slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with a full-colour cover and 81 pages. Published in year 2005 by The Bunny and the Crocodile Press, Washington DC, USA. Cover design by Randy Stanard of DeWitt Design. Photograph of author by Jimmy Patterson. ISBN 0 938572 43 1 UK price on application.

Behind Travis Hall’s out-of-focus cover painting of the Mystic River, curving like the trunk of an elephant, is a volume of autobiographical work where entangled threads of elegy, myth, block-verse and the occasional essay combine to inform and/or divert the attentive reader.

Poetess Rose Solari, not without pluck, unburdens herself in the public arena, settles accounts with her late parents and generally takes care of unfinished business. She hankers to run after loved ones just as ancient Orpheus pursued Eurydice when she had perished from snakebite. A serious case of introspection dressed up in Grecian cloth you might think. And there you might be half right.

For me Solari scores best when she gets away from the antique Greeks and puts more of herself into the poem as she does for example in her poem My Mother’s Elephants written with feeling – one of the most moving in the book:

Because of their size, and the shape of their ears, and the sweetness

and wisdom she claimed to see

in their miraculously-lashed eyes, my mother,

for as long as I can remember, loved elephants.

Like mother’s pachyderms Orpheus in the Park is a lumbering but impressive animal of many parts. The 7-page addendum will fill-in your mythological gaps. Gwilym Williams

A Rum Do, poems by Ivan Wallace. An A5 sized stapled booklet with a two-colour cover and 20 pages. Published in year 2006 by Bramble Press. Available from Mr I. Wallace, 15 Drumhoy Drive, Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, BT38 8NN. No ISBN. Price £2.50 (includes the cost of postage and packing).

This is not a collection that offers dramatically original insights or daring innovations. Ivan Wallace gently probes everyday situations, the ‘little things,’ like a visit to the betting shop in ‘The Tip,’ or receiving medical treatment in ‘Blood Test.’ At the same time, everything is subjected to Wallace’s dry humour. The blood test is administered by a cleaner, and the horse the old man was so sure of, loses.

Despite the humour, there is an element of genuine despair here. In ‘Giving Up,’ the man in the bar is giving up hope for lent. In ‘Malice,’ the divorced man writes to his wife, ‘I’m so hungry I’ve just eaten a mouse,’ and she replies, ‘Next time try eating a rat, they’re more filling.’

This collection can be warmly recommended as the writer’s gentle humanity makes his poems well worth reading. Ingrid Riley

The Good is Abroad, poems by Will Daunt. An A5 size perfect-bound book with a 2-colour cover and 52 pages. Published in year 2006 by Lapwing Publications, c/o 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT14 8HQ. ISBN 1-905425-32-5. Price £5.95 ��12.00.

To be a good poet you need to be an observer of life and nature. To be a very good poet you need to be an observer with empathy. Will Daunt in his latest collection ‘The Good is Abroad’ seems to demonstrate that he has both these qualities. And perhaps even a bit more; he likes to play tricks with words. The ‘Shadow Lad’ who ‘came fast to the world’ but ‘ran out of faces who��d let him fake lives’, and poor ‘Polly’ learning that ‘school’s full of places where you cannot hide,’ both are strangers to the absent ‘good.’ I must also admit to liking poets who are not stuck on style and form. The occasional sonnet, villanelle and rhyming couplet dotted among free verse poems is my cup of tea, perhaps drunk in the ��Nursing Home,’ hiding in its ‘Welcome Room’ with one eye on the cricket until ‘pain stops play.’ John Plevin

Coasting Norfolk, poems by Wendy Webb and Guest Poets. An A5 size perfect-bound book with a full-colour cover and 92 pages. Published in year 2006 by: Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY. ISBN 1-905126-73-5. Price £5.50.

Coasting Norfolk is the culmination of a year’s observations of East Anglia: history, art, culture, people, place; sketch impressions from near and far. I enjoyed the mixture of personal reminiscences and delight in the countryside – Wendy Webb’s work is sometimes romantic, rhyming, and feminine, (which I like), finding fun in the experiences and land she describes. She is supported by guest poets: Brigid Simpson’s Selection of Norfolk Haiku and Norman Bisset’s Peace particularly appeal. Somehow the minimalism of the haiku epitomise the peace reflected by the form, words and landscape: There isn’t much here but sea and sky, clouds and flocks of migrating birds, eye-patched like Nelson… while seeing far more and using the rhythm of bird names to bring colour to the senses and imagination. It is an interesting collection of gentle poems which pay homage not only to the landscape but also to poetry about it. Janie Thomas

Book/Booklet Reviews

Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 46, September 2006

Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below

Dirty Blonde at the Cash Machine, poems by Ray Hollingsworth. An A5 size, spiral bound book with x? number of pages and numerous black and white photographs, (pages expand concertina style). Photography by Stuart Nicholls, photographic model: Julie Patterson. Published by Kiss Production Ltd, 2006. E-mail erotic.cafe @btopenworld.com £9.95. ISBN 0-9536958-3-2 Available via Amazon on-line.

With this glossy collection of poems and photographs I was like a traveller unfolding and refolding maps. Open, the book is sometimes more than a yard wide. I should have tackled it on the floor with a boxed pizza and an uncorked bottle instead of on a small table in a pub corner. Try this for size from Tee Shirt:

“When you’re standing in a bus queue

and a girl comes up to you wearing a tee shirt saying

‘trust me, I am Jesus the Lord’

and gets so close that you can almost taste the flavour of her chewing gum …”

Hollingsworth’s words are backed up with atmospheric shots of model Julie Patterson in back alleys and under neon lights. Dirty Blonde at the Cash Machine is a potent assortment of messianic verse, social commentary, inner-city rebelliousness and classy poster-poetry. Ray Hollingsworth is one to keep an eye on. You’ll find him at the pointed end of your next scenario. Gwilym Williams

Measured Rings, poems by Ingrid Riley. An A5 sized perfect-bound book with 83 pages and a 2-colour cover. Photographs by Peter Riley, edited by Dr Graham Riley. Published in year 2005 by Ingrid Riley, 18 Uplands, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7BL. ISBN 0-9525304-3-0. £5.99.

Regular readers of Pulsar will be familiar with Ingrid Riley through her reviews. Her latest publication ‘Measured Rings’ provides us with the opportunity to look at the poet behind the reviewer. Many of her poems examine the impact of nature on our lives: the stripped Autumn trees recalling ‘the whisper of a loving breeze’; the noisy ravens dropping from the sky ‘like sombre rain’; and in Winter the whisper of death that ‘comes in slow waltzes’. But not all is nature and seasons. A section of the book deals with conflict and its impact on modern life ‘where tears feed their hoard of sorrows’. The brushes with conflict come in different guises from neighbours from hell with their ‘windows blinded by spinning threads of fear’, to the ‘tormented souls’ embroiled in the war in Iraq.

Whether in the world of conflict or nature, Ingrid Riley’s poetry has a certain lyrical quality, perhaps best tasted in the quiet of the evening with a glass of wine and time to think. John Plevin

Cheap Therapy, poems by Nick Mannion. An A5 size perfect-bound book with a full-colour cover and 84 pages. Published in year 2005 by Matador, 9 De Montfort Mews, Leicester, LE1 7FW. ISBN 1-905237-42-1 £7.99. E-mail books@troubador.co.uk www.troubador.co.uk/matador

Despite an unfortunate title and unappetizing cover graphics, Mannion more often than not delivers the aesthetic goods. He writes perceptively and honestly of the ebb-and-flow of human relationships, with scarcely any trace of bathos or self-pity. I would add that his poetry, all true poetry, may assist our healing, but amounts to much more than mere therapy in the end. Blair Ewing

When the Thunder Woke Me, poems by The Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2005. The Foyle Foundation / The Poetry Society. A slightly smaller than A5 sized stapled booklet with a full-colour cover and 32 pages. Price? No ISBN. Published by The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London, WC2H 9BX. www.poetrysociety.org.uk e-mail: fyp@poetrysociety.org.uk Contact: Andrew Bailey.

A vigorous and warm handshake should be given to whoever in the Foyle Foundation decided to help the Poetry Society showcase young poets. Of course teenagers and young adults will not have breadth of experience to produce deep poetry I hear you say perhaps; but this would be too stereotypical and mostly wrong in this case. The collection of the best from the Young Poets of the Year Award of 2005 does have its charming naivety in some places, but there is much to frustrate any of us who struggle with the form well into middle age and beyond, with their maturity. “How to Watch a Child Die” by Amanda Chong could easily have been simply maudlin, but a delightful line saves it; “Turn away from the blank faces of your own children/ and make no associations/ Pretend you do not notice/ how your teenager leaves her food/”. There are a few deliberately-obscure-to-be-fashionable pieces, but I am happy to persevere with re-readings over the next few months… there are few enough volumes where I would have said the same. Some of these names, I shall watch out for, to see if they are published and grow further. To take, unfairly, one example, Ella Thompson provided in “Finding a Voice” a simple form of words that led to many layered meanings representing frustration and despair using landscape/classical metaphors. When I make connections using these words where perhaps none were intended by the poet, I know I have found a poem that is worth returning to. I would recommend finding yourself a copy and look out for future editions. Lachlan Robertson

Average Sunday Afternoon, short stories by Pat Jourdan. A5 size perfect-bound book with 55 pages and a full colour cover. Published in year 2005 by Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY. ISBN 1-905126-29-8 £5.50.

These stories are entertaining and fun, though some are rather ‘samey’. Sometimes I wished Pat Jordan had penetrated deeper into the psychology of the essence of her tale and made more of it, rather than leaving the first idea on one level. For instance, Miss Havisham Reconstructed makes for light-hearted reading in the knowledge that everyone, but everyone, knows Miss Havisham from Dickens’ David Copperfield, so the legend can be used, or built upon to advantage. So when Miss Havisham decides to up and make something of her life in today’s culture, rather than mope it away the very thought is funny and the story too. She and Queen Victoria epitomise a psychological illness which still exists sometimes unrecognized, however, and rather than disregard that and use it for the joke, it could have been unravelled and turned around more cleverly, to everyone’s greater benefit, without losing the laughter. Janie Thomas

Book/Booklet Reviews

Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 45, March 2006

Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below

The Blood In My Veins, poems 1995 – 2005, by U.V. Ray; A5 size, perfect-bound book with a 2-colour cover and 51 pages. Published in year 2005 by Cyberwit.net, 4/2B, L.I.G., Govindpur Colony, Allahabad-211004 (U.P.), India. www.cyberwit.net also www.uvray.moonfruit.com ISBN 81-8253-042-3 Price Rs. 80/- $15 ��9.

Minimalist hobo poetry has got to hit the spot like a shot of Polish vodka. Now when your mugshot is on the cover (leather jacket and shades) at nine quid a throw over the blurb promising primitive emotional vigour and your leading punch is that good old refrain to the young whore in Reno...that made my stay worthwhile then the poems inside need to be extra special, a lot more than mere jottings on the run. This is not always the case here.

After the introduction which spoke of smashed up cars and trashed hotel rooms many of the poems turned out to be quite tame but The Painted Doll was in a different class; almost Bukowskian. It seems that U.V. Ray, the self-confessed Blue Coat School dropout, can do it if he tries. It's getting him to try that seems to be the problem. Gwilym Williams

“Courtney’s the future she is,” poems from the people of Parks and East Walcot, Swindon. Compiled and introduced by Community Poet, Tony Hillier. Published in year 2005. An A5 size stapled booklet with a 2-colour cover and 74 pages. Price / publisher / ISBN? Poems / responses to Tony Hillier, c/o The Shop, 66 Cavendish Square, Swindon, SN3 2LR, telephone 01793 529938 or c/o Walcot Community Shop, Sussex Square, telephone 01793 512878 of e-mail tony.hillier@ntlworld.com

Tony Hillier brings together the residents of Parks and East Walcot Swindon and represents their views in poetic form. The idea was to create a sort of social survey from which to inform and lobby. And sure enough, as I was reading this publication Prime Minister Tony Blair was present in Swindon armed with a pressure washer and a rather fixed grin, trying to remove some particularly stubborn graffiti from a brick wall. Deserves a poem in itself.

Some of the poems are unassisted but most were the result of collaboration between Tony and the author. The poetry has a nice rawness and you can hear the local dialect in the voices of the poets. Here’s an extract –

Kids Today

Trouble is no discipline

Teachers daren’t breathe on the kids

Kids today

Toddlers with their mums and dads,

Chuck litter on the floor

And not a word is said,

Not a blind bit of notice taken

Kids today. That’s parents for you!

Babies bringing up babies.

One has to admire Tony Hillier for putting this project together. The book gives a voice to a community, the result isn't pretty, but it is very effective. Dick Stewart

The Devil’s Advocate by Charles Portolano. A chapbook of poems; A5 size stapled booklet with a 2-colour cover and 28 pages. Published 2005. Price $5 including postage and packaging. Published by RWG Press, P.O. Box 17205, Fountain Hills, AZ 85269-7205, USA. ISBN 0-9659495-4-0 E-mail: angeldec24@hotmail.com www.thesouldecision.com

Charles Portolano presents a bleak and unrelieved vision of ‘the world spinning out of control,’ (‘End Time’), particularly the USA. Many of the poems are scarcely-veiled attacks on politicians and their followers like ‘The bush is burning’ or ‘Duplicity,’ where the poet speaks of a dictator with a ‘crooked smile’ who is ‘always speaking out of both sides of his mouth.’

At their best the poems are an elegy for a purer, gentler America, as evoked in ‘Route 66’ where the famous highway is crumbling away into history, taking traditional values with it, ‘the landscape has changed / the times have changed / the people have changed / they think differently.’

Throughout the collection the mood grows progressively bleaker, we look forward to a message of hope at the end, into better times. It never comes, ‘no Second Coming / no second chance / time’s up, game’s over.’ Ingrid Riley

Chanticleer Magazine, issue 11 (October 2005), poems, reviews, news and views. A5 size stapled booklet with a 3-colour cover and 40 pages. ISSN 1478-0704 Price £3.00. Editor: Richard Livermore, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh, EH3 6HN.

Chanticleer Magazine Issue Eleven includes a lively series of poems and prose on a theme of ‘Elven’: Elven being a dyslexic, ‘mind-the-gap’ ‘eleven’, which foretells elfish mischief. There is something intelligent about finding fun in everything and reflecting it beautifully, and the magazine does not disappoint. Forty pages of poems, essays, quotes and reviews starts with a quote which speaks of ‘necessary destructions’: by the poet ‘who speaks in the name of a creative power capable of overturning all orders… in order to affirm Difference’ and the ‘politician, who is … concerned to deny that which ‘differs’ so as to … prolong an established historical order…,’ followed by a series of poems by Anon, of Scotland, which demonstrate the same poetic principle: that the fool - as in court jester, or Anon – is cleverest because he can show amusement in, and lift, all life’s tragedies, without blame. Other articles and poems are worthy of such intelligent inclusion. A joyous interlude. Janie Thomas

Krax, No. 42. Poems, interviews, reviews, illustrations, stories, news – from various contributors. A5 size stapled booklet with? number of pages. No ISSN. Price £3.50 $7. Editor: Andy Robson, 63 Dixon Lane, Leeds, Yorkshire, LS12 4RR.

Apart from the front cover, there’s not a page of Krax (Issue No. 42) that isn’t stuffed with poems, pictures, prose and reviews. Clearly one of the Editor’s priorities is to squeeze in as much as possible. Are other priorities discernible, for example content and quality? As far as content goes a certain ribald humour seems flavour of the month, at least as far as this issue is concerned. An above average example would be Richard Bonfield’s Zooplankton with its ‘vast paella of the weird.’ But there is also the occasional foray into a more thoughtful world such as that found in Harland Ristau’s poem Impromptu where most seem busy ‘searching muck for a moment of money.’

If you like your poetry to give you a fierce dig in the ribs together with the knowing wink, you’ll feel at home with Krax. However, if you’re looking for something a little more meaningful you might be better off looking elsewhere. John Plevin

Iota 72, 2005/04; A5 size, perfect-bound book with a 2-colour cover and 60 pages. Poems, reviews and news from various contributors. ISSN 0-266-2922. Editors: Bob Mee and Janet Murch, Ragged Raven Press, 1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Warwickshire, CV37 0LR. Subscription £12/year for 4 quarterly editions. E-mail: iotapoetry@aol.com or visit www.iotapoetry.co.uk

In a world of flash-by poetry publications and read-them-then-they're-gone internet websites, it's a delight to know that Iota is still pressing out regular eclectic writings from poets across the world. It is an example to us all. Simple, single layered poetry that pleases such as "Romance at an OPS Convention" by Harvey Goldner (In her blue diamond dress/ she looked like a springer spaniel/ but naked on the grass/ she looked like God) could have benefited from a critical editor, but this was a minor gripe. I was particularly struck by Paul Lee's "The Negative Children" that touchingly illuminated an incapacitating skin condition. I also revelled in the daftness of Nigel Humphrey's, "The Quantum Leap Explained". There are also plenty of thoughtful reviews and scattered advertising pieces from the Ragged Raven "arm" of the Iota enterprise.
Endpiece: As I survey my substantial booklet collection on the shelves, including many of Iota's, I worry for the future. There is nothing like being able to pull the printed page from the bookshelf as it will always be easy to access this material on impulse. Let's ensure that we don't, in this small poetry world, become too self absorbed and lose these publications.

We need some fresh ideas to keep us relevant and exciting for the future. Lachlan Robertson

Book/Booklet Reviews

Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 44, December 2005

Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below

Iota 70, 2005/02; A5 size, perfect-bound book with a 2-colour cover and 60 pages. Poems, reviews and news from various contributors. ISSN 0-266-2922. Editors: Bob Mee and Janet Murch, Ragged Raven Press, 1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Warwickshire, CV37 0LR. Subscription £12/year for 4 quarterly editions. E-mail: iotapoetry@aol.com or visit www.iotapoetry.co.uk

This issue of Iota is marvellous! Spurred on by a ‘strange individual’ standing for parliament as candidate for the True English Poetry Party to highlight the need for a return to real English poetry which, he said, died out at the end of the 19^th century when poets began to write unrhyming poetry, the editors call two witnesses who say that rhyme is ‘…the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre …�� and ‘a large proportion of the language of every good poem can in no respect differ from that of good prose. We will go further. It may be safely affirmed that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition’ (Milton, about Paradise Lost and Wordsworth’s preface to Lyrical Ballads). This editorial is the hook upon which some well chosen poems are hung. It works well. Congratulations Ragged Raven Press, Janet Murch and Bob Mee. Subscribe. Janie Thomas

Iota 71, 2005/03; see previous review in this edition of Pulsar for Iota editorial information.

Over the years Iota has retained a high quality of writing, and this issue, with contributions from Uruguay, Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Poland and Belgium, as well as the UK, carries on this tradition. It is difficult to identify a common thread apart from the tendency in these poems to look at life from a ‘different’ viewpoint.

In ‘The Print Room in Summer,’ Pat Watson contrasts the cool, rarefied atmosphere inside with the outside heat where ‘pigeons jostle peevishly,’ and where, one concludes, ��Brit Art, videos, formaldehyde’ belong. This atmosphere of timelessness appears again in ‘Dry-stone Sketch,’ where Philip Burton uses the unchanging features of the Yorkshire landscape to evoke the timeless aspects of life, cleverly linking up in the end to the values embodied in the work of the Bronte sisters.

There is humour here, too. In ‘The day mum kidnapped my lover,’ by C R Cajari, the mother takes the scruffy young man and re-makes him in line with her own vision, then ‘released him back into the wild / to wander among commuters dazed and confused.’ At the end of the collection, as usual, there are several reviews of recent poetry collections and a list of forthcoming events. Ingrid Riley

«

The Univer-Soul Language, volume 1, poems by Sharia Kharif, Heather Smith, Cedric Mixon, Jacole Kitchen, Monica Hill (Diselysia). A slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with a 3-colour cover and 119 pages. Published 2005 by Kobalt books, P.O. Box 1062, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004, USA; www.kobaltbooks.com Cover design by Holly Lane, cover model: Kesha Mixon. ISBN 0-9754357-1-X. $13.95.

The Univer-Soul Language – an anthology of poetry by five American poets of differing ethnicities and backgrounds. Although the backgrounds are different the issues addressed cover the familiar ground of love and betrayal, of trying to find some meaning in the bumpy ride we call life. Heather Smith sees in desire ‘the breeder of regret’ and ‘wonders if she is strong enough to make it without love’. The introspective poetry of Cedric Mixon provides vivid images of a ‘black man stuck in the night,’ hiding in his ‘black-hoodie,’ trying to make it with his ‘pockets filled with boulders.’ Jacole Kitchen’s poetry is sensuous, full of wanting but not quite finding ‘the perfect man,’ ending up in a house ‘reeking of the stench that brokenness leaves.’ Solitude also figures in Monica Hill’s ‘song of loneliness,’ but finding in her poem to her daughter that ‘in a room full of strangers’ it is possible to ‘finally belong.’

I have the suspicion that these five poets are young and exuberant, creating poetry full of fast and furious rhythms and rhymes; perhaps people in a hurry bouncing off relationships like dodgem cars, seeking in Sharia Kharif’s words to ‘release the demons of wishful thinking.’ An opportunity, at least for me, hidden away in the quiet of the English countryside, to look at life through different eyes and different experiences – perhaps in the end this is the key attraction of poetry. John Plevin

Carp in the Wind, poems by David Gill. A5 sized stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 22 pages. Published 2004. Price £? Available from David Gill, (Oxford); e-mail irene_david@gills38.freeserve.co.uk

David Gill, an accomplished and perceptive poet who once resided in Tokyo, is the dinner guest who painstakingly examines the fish, in this case the carp, for bones that might stick in his throat. The 22 bones, sharp and penetrating, are removed, turned, examined closely from angles and assembled delicately on the side plate together with skeleton and skin. The result is an often witty assortment of mid-length fly-in-the-sushi poetry.

Several of the works have been published in various journals but this needn’t put the reader off for the best; In Yodobashi Camera Store, Albatross, The Smile of the Great Buddha, and the title poem Carp in the Wind; have not. I suspect that with my particular favourite, The Smile of the Great Buddha, Gill may have stumbled across an innovative poetry form – the Japanese Sonnet.

This booklet is much more than the sum of its parts, contains no haiku and will repay rereading. Buy it before your next trip to Tokyo. Gwilym Williams

Krax No. 42, an A5 stapled booklet with a 2-colour cover and x? number of pages, (pages unnumbered). Poems, prose, reviews, news, cartoons and illustrations from numerous contributors. Front cover picture, ‘Monkey Puzzle,’ by Harry Turner. Published 2005, Editor: Andy Robson, 63 Dixon Lane, Leeds, LS12 4RR. No ISSN. £3.50 $7.00.

This was my first read of a Krax edition and it is certainly different from your average poetry magazine. I counted one hundred and twenty reviews of other publications, this achieved by microscopically small print and I suspect, a small army of reviewers. It was quite good fun to read the reviews of books that one has previously reviewed for Pulsar. Krax appears not to take itself too seriously; most of the poems are irreverent, humorous or resort to slightly dodgy rhyme. In all honesty, I have to say that some of the poems are dire, but I guess this means that everyone taking part can get into print. The illustrations are mostly fun with the exception of Alan Hunter’s which are seriously good. Every edition will, no doubt, have a few ‘goodies’ and in this one I thought Rodney Wood’s PHOTOGRAPHY, FILM AND TELEVISION took the honours. Here is a short extract –

I doze off in the cinema. The train passes shadows

And I feel the roll and thud of wheels

Before we stop at my station.

I can’t wake and panic despite

Telling myself I’m only dreaming.

To find out, though I have to open my eyes,

Get a snapshot of reality with my Kodak Brownie,

Then go to Bonus Print and get it processed.

A fun read and a good outlet for budding illustrators and poets. Dick Stewart

Brown Eyes, A Selection of Creative Expressions by Black and Mixed-race Women. Edited by Nicole Moore. An A5 size perfect-bound book with 268 pages and with a full colour cover. Published in September 2005 by Matador, 9 De Montfort Mews, Leicester, LE1 7FW, UK. ISBN 1-905237-16-6. £9.99. E-mail books@troubador.co.uk web site www.troubador.co.uk/matador

When I think about my own ancestry, I realise that my people’s rich oral tradition was lost when our written history began in the mid 17^th century. This also resulted due to events that occurred at a time when whole branches of my family found themselves forced off their native soil and found themselves in the Americas. No, I am not black and my ancestors were not slaves; but Scottish. Many branches of my family would have been forced off their land in the Clearances and would have had no choice but to emigrate or face starvation at home. Yet why is there a persistent modern tradition of collecting the issues of black and mixed race peoples into collections such as this? Does the past lie so much heavier on those communities and why does there remain a need to revisit it? This anthology serves up an excellent collection of poems, interviews and essays to help answer that question. But equally, I would encourage black and mixed race readers to also search out David Craig’s “On the Crofters’ Trail: In search of the Clearance Highlanders” just to remind them that obscenities were perpetrated on others too. Lachlan Robertson

Straight Astray, poems by Alessio Zanelli. An A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 104 pages. Published in year 2005 by Troubador Publishing Ltd, 9 De Monfort Mews, Leicester, LE1 7FW, UK. ISBN 1-905237-17-0 £7.99 €12 $15

Forewords (and sleeve notes) are there to sell a book to potential readers, they have a tendency to be effusive, example; “Reading Alessio Zanelli’s poetry is like taking a grand and marvellous tour of sights rarely glimpsed . . .” The book is expertly produced, looks the biz and has excellent artwork on the cover. The poems within, from my viewpoint, are a tad mediocre with nothing particularly inspiring and none that are dire. I guess, as ever, it’s a case of “horses for courses.” Example poem, one that I liked, New Year’s Dictum: An adage has that what/one does upon the new/year’s day is what it will/be mostly doing through all/the year. If that’s the case/then quite long sleeps, a bit/of writing teamed up with/rash drinking wait for me. Overall score: 6½ out of 10. David Pike

Book/Booklet Reviews

Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 43, September 2005

Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below

Attic Warpipes, poems by Tommy Frank O’Connor. An A5 size perfect bound book with a full colour cover and 82 pages. Published 2005 by Bradshaw Books, Tigh Filí, Thompson House, MacCurtain Street, Cork, Ireland; www.tighfili.com ISBN 0-949010-99-5 price €12.

This is a debut collection from the highly acclaimed poet, novelist and storyteller from Co. Kerry. Much of this work has seen the light of day in magazines, including Pulsar, over the years. The Poet splits his work into four sections and I was particularly taken by the first section ‘Tune in the Marrow’ which is largely a remembrance of past life in Co. Kerry. This is an extract from A Masters Rest, in memory of a master fiddler -

A glass of porter banishes his blues,

For chase he plays a set of reels and polkas

Into tired yawn of tomorrow's early hours.

Without a wife he has become groom

To his fiddle, a troubadour

Drawing the cork out of the draught of gloom.

In Homing, the poet shares a train journey –

Smoke in our -NO SMOKING – carriage draws her from the page,

A doe scenting danger.

Her eyes appoint me Fire Brigade.

On return she releases her bosom

To the infant’s hunger. I point my eyes

At my airport novel but it has nothing

To this rapture.

The poems are warm, relaxed, polished and mature. In short, this is a very special book by a very gifted writer. Highly recommended. Dick Stewart

The Poetry Church, a magazine of Christian Poetry, Vol. 10, No. 1 Spring 2005. An A5 sized stapled booklet with a 2-colour cover and 40 pages. Editor: John Waddington-Feather. Published by: Feather Books, PO Box 438, Shrewsbury, SY3 0WN. E-mail: john@waddysweb.freeuk.co www.waddysweb.freeuk.com No ISSN. Price UK £3.00, US $6.00.

Editor John Waddington-Feather, author of the Revd. Blake Hartley Mysterie