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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 24

‘A Troubled Sleep’ by Kurt Newton

just slide out / from beneath that sheet / don’t look what you leave behind…

Kurt Newton is an editor, publisher and website designer from the east coast of the United States. In a career that has spanned several decades, he has produced four novels, two novellas, a selection of short stories and nearly a dozen selections of poetry. Nazi Swastika Bikini Wax Illuminati was published by Alien Buddha in 2019 and Songs of the Underland was published by Ravens Quoth Press in 2022.

The contents of this chapbook are not immediately disquieting or seemingly connected, but neither of those statements is entirely accurate. This is a set of poems that are moving, slowly shifting as you read them, leaving odd, unsettling imprints on the mind long after the brown paper cover is closed.

What’s in it for Me?

The titles initially suggest a sequence of random events, of moments that are presented in isolation, as is often the case in works like this. However, there’s far more at play, a sinister interaction between the moments that are recorded and what happens in between. The whole experience is roughly akin to that moment in a classic horror novel when the reader knows there will be conflict and terror, but does not know when.

From the dreamlike waiting for the crash to happen to the disturbing and worrying The Malingering, we move between reality and imagination, the chill of what is inescapable and inevitable (Every Night I Die in my Dreams and killing the working joe) or the consequences of messing with your own, personal status quo (grandeur of delusion). It is then that it becomes apparent that this is very much a collection, an exploration of a psyche on multiple levels. The consequences of thinking dreams into realities on the page are professionally packaged and effectively dispensed.

This is a selection that asks to be read more than once, and as you do the skill and smartness of Newton shines through. The title is a gateway to what all of us occasionally suffer and are unable to pin down: the poems within offer solutions through narrative that are not nearly as straightforward as the stanzas they are built from. Yet again, Back Room Poetry picks up a jewel and knows exactly how it should be presented for maximum effect.

Personal Favourites

On the Nature of the Abyss for the imagery
drinking in the afterlife for the inference
filling in the blanks for the impact

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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 23

‘We Lost the Birds’ by Ben Verinder

We rush mirrored surfaces / as traffic disperses a flock of commuters.

Ben Verinder lives in rural Hertfordshire. He is an amateur mycologist and a wild food forager, and the biographer of the adventurer and writer Mary Burkett. His poetry has been published in a wide range of magazines, including The Rialto, and he has been shortlisted or commended for the Winchester, Wolverhampton, Bedford, Ver, and Cheltenham Poetry Festival prizes. His debut pamphlet, Botanicals, was published by Frosted Fire in October 2021. Ben started a Writing Poetry MA with Newcastle University in September 2021.

It is easy to see why so much of Ben’s work has placed in contest: there’s a significance to this body of work that easily escapes its stanzas and inhabits the mind long after the pamphlet’s been closed. This is a well-rounded and impeccably presented journey through the modern world, with all the pitfalls that inevitably arise. However, it is with climate change pieces where this pamphlet really shines.

What’s in it for Me?

The opening, titular poem is probably one of the strongest extinction-themed pieces I have read for some time: it takes a very smart poet to hit the right note between casual observation and impending terror and loss. Ben’s strength here, and elsewhere, is the seamless overlap of the mundane and natural, until it becomes impossible to easily separate the two. This is also apparent in High Summer and Jenny Wren.

The normal and the surreal are never too far away from each other, either (Prisoners being a case in point), but the most affecting work is when people are placed front and centre for descriptive dissection. Impossibility of a sex poem is far more affecting than the title might suggest, and we bought you home‘s first line is as powerful as every single one that follows.

It’s satisfying as a writer to come across something that kills you with kindness and gentle horror once in a while. Everybody has an angle, an approach and a brand to sell in the poetry world, but occasionally what you crave is the understated intelligence and diligence of a poet to regard and retell their tales with a true, unwavering honesty. Ben’s a truly authentic example of how poetry doesn’t need to be anything than your own world view to be effective, if the right words get used as descriptors.

Personal Favourites

We Lost the Birds for the imagery
The quietest place on earth for the inference
We brought you home for the impact

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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 22

‘With my Lips pressed to the Ear of the Earth’ by Charlotte Baldwin

someone should do something / we all nod / no one moves

Charlotte Baldwin works on a national project supporting young people’s mental health and as a creative writing tutor & dog walker. As Gypsy Rose Poetry, she travels London visiting people living in isolation to talk about their lives and write poems for them. Her poetry has appeared in the Elements anthology from Fawn Press, The North, Under the Radar, Shearsman, Lighthouse and Tears in the Fence, among others.

I have always believed that the best poetry has the strongest impact when the reader is most open to receive it, and never when it is come to cold. In this case, there was a sense of serendipity as Charlotte’s work came up this week. It has sat in my mind for a while, and only now are there words to describe it. Maybe this isn’t the best approach to take as a reviewer, but the very best work takes time to move to maturity. We are now ready to do this review the justice it deserves.

What’s in it for Me?

Until this pamphlet, I’d never considered my own work as confessional: for me, it’s a reporting of fact as was seen, with all the bias and inconsistency that presents. However, when reading someone else’s work, where history presented as anything but simple recollection, confessional is the word that has been missing as a descriptor. Charlotte’s mind and experience are laid out here for all to see without fear or anguish. The straightforward and almost analytical approach make the fantastical all the more amazing. This collection literally has something for everybody.

Between The Bronte Sisters At Dinner (absolutely not where you think) and I shit a white rabbit (which is literal, figurative and damning) the range, complexity and artistry of the work here is impressive. From concrete pieces to the conversational discomfort of The Obligations of Confessional Poetry (I do love a good footnote in a poem) this is never just words on a page, stanzas in a sequence. It becomes the unfolding of a complex and exacting mind, that knows all too well how to hide a hit of emotional heft in exactly the right places.

Allowing yourself to inhabit someone else’s confessions and them, in turn, unlocking the same in yourself, remains one of the most potent uses of poetry as therapy. To experience moments yourself may be hard, but if one can find a similar experience of somebody else’s… then there is the opportunity to allow words to heal hurt. There’s a reason why Charlotte’s review has more paragraphs than normal this week, and again why it took so long to write. I have lived inside these lines myself, and am grateful for the space.

What Baldwin presents here is a unique perspective of their life and experience, a reminder that we all don’t do enough, or are left wanting, or feel weighed upon by the breath of societal and generational expectation. To free yourself, honesty is the most effective cure, and the honesty displayed here accomplishes that and so much more. This is a collection of masterful recall, from someone who has learnt to listen not just to the World but to themselves with equal significance.

It is a pamphlet precisely filled with honest and rare brilliance.

Personal Favourites

An Ill Wind for the imagery
Eco Therapy for the inference
The Obligations of Confessional Poetry for the impact

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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 21

‘The Vessel of the Now’
by Ink

always agape / its mouth / never yawns;

Ink is a US poet and the editor-in-chief of Stanza Cannon, an online literary magazine for audio poetry. He published four chapbooks before his first collection, Miserable with Fire. He has also had work produced by Piscataway House Publications and Finishing Line Press.

This is a chapbook with no list of poems, simply a first page that reads:

Contents of The Vessel

The Now

This isn’t a story, or indeed a narrative per se. It is a set of statements and situations, wrapped around a central conceit: you are the poetry, it and you are both an indivisible part of experience. The Vessel is both present and absent, concrete and ephemeral, and as such my traditional approach to reviewing wasn’t going to work here.

What’s in it for Me?

As a reviewer, you realize quite early on in the unconventional narratives that pointing at stuff and extolling its virtues only works to a point. Ink’s use of the phrase The Vessel of the Now is what joins every point in this journey to every other. At least, that’s how I think this works, after several readings. The unassuming chapbook contains all the intricacy and fiendish complexity of a Chinese Puzzle Box, which means I could have this all wrong…

The Vessel is many things: self-aware, yet without memory. It won’t judge you, and it seems to have multiple splinters… or maybe they are portals, taking you from one Vessel to the next. They are full and simultaneously too thin to manipulate, some are larger than others… and then, as you look closer, the clues appear and vanish. They grow with us: are they a manifestation of our own selves made as objects? However, hold two of them together and one of them becomes a deception…

If you are one of those people who believe in the idea of time as a flat circle, where we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes time and again, perhaps the Vessel is a means of escaping our own nightmare of tyranny. Or maybe, as the last stanza on the last page suggests, it is the means by which we can escape time and space all together and become immortal. I am sure Ink is well aware of what he has done here, and must be applauded for the beauty and complexity of his work.

It’s taken longer than usual to write this review for one reason, and one alone. I am so utterly enamoured with the brilliance and simplicity of this beautiful set of words that it has taken a whole extra week to distil my thoughts into a workable form. Every time I looked at the review and then back to the work, my ideas altered. I think this is the trick inside the pages that is most satisfying of all. To have created such hidden complexity and thoughtfulness with so few stanzas is an object lesson in poetic ability.

This chapbook is whatever you need it to be, and still won’t give you what you want. It will provide what you need, however, and that’s a genius use of words, and a superb final product. Bravo, Sir. Bravo.

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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 20

‘New European Art’
by Mark Coverdale

5. Is a diorama of instructions on how to dismantle a Lego concentration camp.

Mark Coverdale was born in Darlington, and now lives and works in North London. He is the founder of Tonic Sta Press, and has had work published by Magma, Nymphs and Thugs, Culture Matters and Burning Housepress. When he’s not writing, he’s restoring furniture or being a shonky drummer.

Mark’s inclusion as a Flight of the Dragonfly Press author brings me great satisfaction, not simply because he was picked up about the same time as they ‘discovered’ me. Mark is part of a dying breed: the honest, earnest poetic voice whose heart and soul has been poured into every single word of this pamphlet. It’s several worlds away from anything I have read from anybody else, and massively affecting as a result.

What’s in it for Me?

Once you’re past the superlative New European Art Exhibition Guide, it’s time to dive into the work proper. Coat is absolutely the poem to start things off here, because it’s the vital link between narrator and the journey: across Europe, through brutal wars and terrible events, highlighting the importance of the Vyshyvanka in Ukranian cultural identity and a love of football that transcends just about everything.

Except, Penalties isn’t about football. Jam Sandwich is a narrative that covers decades, and i am a photograph i am is the perfect endpoint, except you don’t want it to stop. You want none of this to end because it’s a world you knew nothing about until the pamphlet was opened and now the imagery is so damning and precise and the horror is very real and inescapable and… you remember to breathe, and step back.

This is a pamphlet that demands your attention and respect, from a poet with the most righteous of political hearts and a soul we should all aspire to emulate. At its core are the things that matter most to this man, and it is a privilege to be allowed to share those items, the way they are presented and then delivered on the page. If you can take the time to find your way deep into these poems’ structures, I guarantee you will not be left wanting.

Personal Favourites

i am a photograph i am for the imagery
absolutely after the belarus free theatre for the inference
White Cat Black Roof for the impact

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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 19

‘Scenes of Silent Horror’
by Lauren Ruddock

I’ve stopped being that person / The pain is just a niggle, no more a stab.

Lauren Ruddock lives and works in York. She has poems published in the ‘Creative Expressions’ anthology, and has authored a poem used in a nationwide video campaign by the organization Time to Change during Mental Health Awareness Week in 2020.

This selection of twelve poems tells a story about abuse and its consequences, something that resonates very strongly with me. Watching someone have the courage to write about these experiences is the reminder of how words are powerful not just as instigators, but as a means of repairing damage.

What’s in it for Me?

This story begins with Boundary Lines: how being trusting and open has its disadvantages, and how people can and often do take advantage. As we travel through each poem, Lauren makes it very clear how one relationship can have two sides, and that duality can be dangerous and painful over time. These are strong words, neatly woven and with an undoubted confidence in the process.

When we arrive at New Chapter, it is with an undoubted sense of optimism. The story doesn’t end here, of course, there is the possibility of so much yet to come in Lauren’s work and I hope that there is more poetry forthcoming in the future. Having seen some of the work produced in their advocacy role for York Ending Stigma, it would be wonderful to see more.

Don’t let the simplicity of this slim volume deceive you: these are powerful, significant pieces with genuine and heartfelt emotional resonance. As a great believer of poetry as a tool for therapy, this pamphlet is very much a shining example of what can happen if you listen to your heart and let that be recorded on the page. Everybody can learn something new from reading new work. Lauren’s illuminate a journey to both peace and enlightenment.

Personal Favourites

intertidal for the imagery
(H)ours for the inference
Salt and Rice for the impact

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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 17

‘Tapping at Glass’
by Tim Tim Cheng

The poet baths in the tonal spectrum / where brilliance and sadness / are not far.

Tim Tim Cheng is a poet and a teacher from Hong Kong, currently based in the UK. Their poems are published or anthologized in POETRY, The Rialto, Ambit and elsewhere. Their latest appearances include the Hidden Door festival, Singapore Writers Festival, and BBC Scotland. They are a WrICE fellow, an Ignite fellow, plus a member of Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective 2022/23.

This pamphlet possesses both a maturity and depth which is frankly staggering. There is so much presented, and an equal amount to learn. I’d say it’s one of the best pamphlets I’ve ever read since I began my journey as a poet.

What’s in it for Me?

From time to time, you are lucky enough as a reader to encounter something so utterly unique and compelling that your words will never do it real justice. Such it is with Tapping at Glass, which is the reminder that not all poets upbringings are alike, and many have to balance uncertainty and change along with the business of writing. There are centuries of history in the white spaces here, a life that the poetry only hints at but that I want, need to discover more context for. How Memory Works sent me scurrying for Wikipedia: Icarus, a girl, talks to interviewers made me wish I could combine ancestry and reality with even a fraction of Cheng’s artistry.

The music of these poems, their effortless construction and uninhibited openness, is the reminder of how balance in narrative and observation always makes for the most compelling work. Notes to impossibility, Salt and Rice are outstanding examples, an easy tone with the deepest of depths, but it is Field Notes that takes that conceit then delivers it with a series of gut punches. This is a life I am grateful to be shown, that is shared with a very specific intent.

In the end, however, it is the honesty that pervades every line which elevates this work to outstanding, and I am in awe of both the quality of the narrative and the depth of its consequence. This is a superlative debut, and hints at magnificence to come.

Personal Favourites

intertidal for the imagery
(H)ours for the inference
Salt and Rice for the impact

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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 16

‘Mortal Veins’
by Rhianna Levi

the woodland swamped calling / They are the warning…

Rhianna Levi is a writer, teacher and academic based in Worcester. She holds the title of Worcestershire Poet Laureate 22/23, being the youngest poet ever to have the role.

Rhianna has been published in numerous anthologies and literature mags. She also holds degrees from both the University of Worcester and Birmingham City University. This also remains another triumph using Amazon fore distribution: don’t let people tell you that the self-publishing route is any less validating than a third party approach. I’ve done it myself and the sense of satisfaction is immense, especially when content exceeds expectation as it does here.

What’s in it for Me?

This is a powerhouse of a pamphlet, and it was a joyful challenge for me to complete. Rhianna’s style is economical, intellectual, and as a result sits at a density that demanded an undivided attention… and when you encounter someone who thinks completely differently to you as a poet, you should find yourself obliged to work harder, ensuring the text you’re reading is given extra examination. These poems offer education, and an exercise in comprehension on multiple levels.

It is easy to see why Levi was chosen to be the Laureate for Worcestershire. Whether it’s the eloquent economy of Limbo or the dense, disturbing wordplay of Permission, I Think Not, there are a huge range of topics discussed and an incredibly interesting and complex use of wordplay. Once I’d found a starting point with Keys are of Importance, a vivid sense of individuality and intellect began to unlock, and that makes this journey all the more satisfying.

Sometimes it can be hard when you encounter work that approaches the business of poetry in a manner that you struggle to initially understand. However, with time and patience a huge amount has been learnt from this experience, the relationship of poet to the craft, and how that translates into a larger body of work. It’s an impressive debut, and I look forward to seeing how Levi’s work progresses from this point onwards.

Personal Favourites

Rose Person for the imagery
Soul Departed for the inference
Human-made tarmac for the impact

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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 15

‘The fall of the repetitive mix tape’
by Darren J. Beaney

Frustrating fruit trees are ignored / as a figure walks / researching the dead, dressed for business.

Darren J. Beaney is a writer and poet, who lives and works in Sussex. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Brighton, and is one half of the hugely successful Flight of the Dragonflies, whose spoken word events have been nominated for a Saboteur Award. He’s a punk rock lover, who has had three pamphlets published over the last few years.

Darren’s also a mate whose poetry has had a pretty significant effect on my own journey as a writer. His approach is unlike anyone else’s I have read, his voice is undoubtedly and beautifully his alone. This is a poet who knows exactly what that means and how to use this to maximize impact: this chapbook sees him at the absolute top of his game.

What’s in it for Me?

It all starts innocently enough, with Put away offering powerful imagery and opening oomph. Muzorewi’s daughter however is the clue, if you needed it, that every poem’s title is also a song by The Fall, who were an English post-punk group, formed in 1976 in Prestwich, Greater Manchester. Suddenly, poems have secondary resonances when interleaved with the history of Mark. E Smith, one of the most influential individuals of the post punk scene worldwide. Mr B does love burning the script to suit his own fiendish imagination.

My knowledge of The Fall is not as encyclopedic as I know Darren’s will be, so I can’t tell you just how well he starts with the titles and then does them his way. What I can tell you is that the imagery, the settings and the impact of each of these poems is a different diorama for countless situations. No two works are ever comparable, and every single poem will have a line, somewhere, that surprises you with its honesty. My favourite right now (and they change regularly) comes from English scheme: ‘The future is as tantalising as / a curly 11th hour spam sandwich‘ and there is absolutely no argument here.

There is physical wordplay too (Bingo-Master), the oddness of random encounter in A figure walks, the economical brilliance of Rebellious Jukebox… honestly, every single one of these poems is fucking with your brain in absolutely the best way possible. I am reminded of other punk bands, of the fringes where poems could be rebellion but end up being made safe and digestible because it is easier… but when I read Darren’s work, I don’t want that. I want to pogo through the entire chapbook and come out the other side exhausted and smelling of lager and sweat, because these poems MADE ME MOVE.

I’ll keep throwing myself into this for months and still be happy.

Personal Favourites

In my area for the imagery
Crap rap 2 for the inference
Printhead for the impact

Any Other Business

I try not to get carried away with these reviews, but honestly, this has to be said: why is more poetry not this joyously bonkers? So much can be learned here about how a single mind can create the powerful and the unique without the need to compromise one iota on professional and personal integrity.

THIS CHAPBOOK IS SUPERB.

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#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 14

‘twelve ways to occupy my body’
by Sloane Angelou

i swear / my god wishes everything in my mouth was fluid…

Sloane Angelou is a storyteller and writer of West African origin, who lives and works in Canada. They are passionate about learning from human existence through the process of interrogating the same. They are also the second poet to contact me for a review via the Portal, which initially involved a little Internet magic to achieve. However, I am very glad to have gotten a copy of this for myself.

One of the main reasons for setting up this series of reviews was to open one mind and heart to poets and forms that would not normally have been explored. Sloane’s work is a superb example of the intellectual benefit of doing just that. Here is a sequence of twelve poems that isn’t simply a list, or indeed only a pamphlet. It is an exquisite unfolding of a unique poetic narrative.

What’s in it for Me?

The cover will tell you exactly which twelve ways this particular body can be occupied as a starting point. The pictograms make this explicitly clear in some forms, but others require decryption and comprehension of why the red lines are placed where they are. The text offers clues, too, that there are references to heart, eyes, mouth… but are these the real spaces, or is the poet alluding to more? Are we not one huge space to occupy, if the brain first allows a fertile idea access?

These poems also read as a complete, satisfying sequence, and it is in this form which, at least for me, the most enlightenment is garnered. Here is a reflection on what a body is, how others view it and how their perceptions shape our own journey both within it and alongside it. As a non-religious person, when the text asks me ‘why does God live inside you’ a ternary discussion of the spiritual journey is revealed, reminding there is even more to be uncovered here than the purely physical.

Please don’t let postage from Canada put you off purchasing this sequence, as this is the reminder that poetry is everywhere, in every language and with infinite outcomes waiting to be uncovered if the reader is willing to open both heart and mind simultaneously, and crucially do the work. This, of everything that’s been read so far this year, has taught me the most about why it matters to present your poems in your way, and in a space that you prepare and present as sacred.

Personal Favourites

Normally, I would highlight particular portions of the text in this bit. This time, I urge you to go read it all, and then make notes, before coming back and doing it again. Take time to learn about Sloane’s motivations and the language used. I have learnt that Chineke is the creator of the universe and everything good in it along with rain, trees, and other plants, and have again been made to realize how little I do know of other significant areas of the world.

Poetry is a means of enlightenment and education. Make this pamphlet part of yours.

Any Other Business

This pamphlet is a perfect 150mm square of beauty. It’s always a joy to get work that doesn’t just refuse to confirm to the word norm, but is also produced outside the size constraints of ‘established’ work. Full marks to Kith Books for making everything about this work unique and special.

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