Killing Kanoko by Hiromi Ito
My copy of Killing Kanoko came with a friendly note that said: "So cool that you're buying this book. I went to college with Hiromi Ito's daughter, Kanoko. She is brilliant - enjoy!" I looked again at the title and felt, I have to say, a little troubled. Sure enough, the poem 'Killing Kanoko' deals with post-natal depression and visions of infanticide and abortion. It does so using deeply unsettling, brutal language ...
Ken Edwards
"I think maybe a generation has grown up accepting as normal experimentation in visual art, music and film, and has extended that expectation to writing."
by Andrea Tallarita
When, almost one hundred years ago, John Drinkwater was asked to write his book The Lyric as an introduction to this literary concept, he discussed "the commonly accepted opinion that a lyric is an expression of personal emotion" and reached the conclusion that "lyric and poetry are synonymous terms". No doubt both statements can be traced back to a history of criticism.
by Chrissy Williams
The first time I entered the Poetry Library as an official employee I felt like I was walking into Oz: everything suddenly turned into colour, becoming more fantastical and vivid than before.
by Kirsten Irving
As anyone who's received editorial suggestions from me will no doubt have noticed, I have a predilection for hacking off the end of poems ...
Dr F says: "Ted Hughes, Anne Stevenson and dozens of others have been bewitched by apus apus. Now you can make your own fleet of swifts and relive the moments that inspired those poets in your own living room."
Dr F says: "Using an innovative e-fridgemagnet system, I have created an in-depth simulation of this most important stage of a poetry book's conception. You are the copy-writer! Which words will you choose?"
Dr F says: "Recreating the experiments of others isn't an activity I usually indulge in, but here I have generously allowed my minions this Queneau-apeing gesture - merely for the sake of getting the rest of you up to speed, you understand."
Heather Phillipson, Faber New Poets 3
A recent letter to the Cambridge Literary Review referred to "the simple plundering of domesticated interiority for its symbolic potential" as the poetic standard which Cambridge School poets are keen to move beyond. The writer could have been (but almost assuredly wasn't) making a jab at Heather Phillipson specifically ...
The Reluctant Vegetarian by Richard Moorhead
The pamphlet form is too rarely used like this: to present a whole, fully realised sequence that is quickly and easily digested, still more easily shared and, owing to its formal coherence, stays with you like a favourite recipe.
Poems 1965-1875 by Margaret Atwood
Walking through a bookstore and looking for novels by Margaret Atwood, one is confronted with a score of titles – Surfacing, Cat’s Eye, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake, to mention only the most prominent. Turning to the poetry shelves, the selection (as always) thins considerably.
Sounds in the Grass by Matt Nunn
You don't have to venture far into Matt Nunn's third book to realise how apt the title is. The first two poems see him getting his engine started, but by 'Big beautiful bastard' it's clear that Nunn is building his work not around themes or a voice or structual skeletons, but a thread of sound that he hungrily follows ...
The English Sweats by James Brookes
One of the hardest things for a poet, especially a younger poet, to get away with is writing densely packed son-of-the-soil song - poems that accumulate in hard fragments of detail, full of archaic-sounding words and implying a serious, almost religious connection to the land ...
Small Hours by Lachlan Mackinnon
What do the ‘small hours’ mean to you? Are they a time for honesty? A time when you stop pretending to be yourself? A time for reflection and introspection, when conversation becomes a discussion of great truths and sacred secrets? time when our thoughts turn towards the times we seldom let ourselves remember? Where your txt messages spring straight from the id and your Googling becomes instinctive and erratic?
Coin Opera reviewed in Hand+Star
"These no doubt knowledgeable palmists and astrologers have discovered my foray into artform cross-pollination! What think they? Will they rat me out to the Alchemical Council?"
Coin Opera featured in Retro Gamer/NGamer
"Any exposure outside of a small number of dedicated magazines is hard work for a poetry book from a small press, even one run by such a limitlessly talented genius as myself. So it's a bregrudging well done to my minions for getting the editors of these well-circulated glossies to highlight the existence of this splendiferous volume."
Scarecrows
£4.00, March 2010
"I don't see why I should be interested in this, seeing as it's nothing to do with my work, but one of my underlings has just had his pamphlet of his work published by a Scottish press. I suppose the subject matter is suitably intriguing, though I am, of course, far too busy to read it myself."
Obakarama
£5.00 (+ postage), December 2009
"The second micro-anthology from Sidekick Books contains poems and artwork inspired by traditional Japanese monsters. The title is a portmanteau of 'panorama' and 'Obakemono', the Japanese word for a changed or perverted thing ..."
Coin Opera
£5.00 (+ postage), December 2009
"The first book to be released by my own personal imprint, Sidekick Books, is a micro-anthology of poems inspired by computer games, from Bride of Pinbot to Bubble Bobble, Space Invaders to Street Fighter II, Paradroid to Portal."
Bardgames
Free with Fuselit: Tilt
"The 15th issue of Fuselit features an extra supplementary booklet - my experiment 0.0, if you will - featuring poems whose forms are controlled and contorted by the rules of dusty tabletop games of yore, such as Scrabble, Battleships, Trivial Pursuit and Dominoes."
"Now that www.drfulminare.com is online I see no further significant obstacle to the furthering of my experiments. Soon that society of honourable gentlemen which outcast me for unsuitable activities will be pleading for me to renew my membership!"
Hover your pointy thing over the icons above and in the centre. I, the inestimable genius alchemist Dr Fulminare, shall reveal what lies beyond.
