Today is officially my 10th Book-Blog-Birthday! To celebrate 10 years of book blogging, I have selected my Top Ten Poetry Books from the past 10 years of reviewing! When I first started this book blog, I spent several days struggling with the impossible decision of what genre to focus on. I love poetry, but I also love reading lots of other genres. In the end I decided that the blog should reflect the blogger: I would blog equally about poetry and fiction, and about literary events and festivals too, creating a space that reflects who I am, and which books I enjoy reading. Continue reading
Book Reviews
Ten Years of Book Blogging! A Celebration, Reflection & Top Ten Books
I launched my book blog 10 years ago, on 18th March 2016. So this month I am celebrating 10 years of book blogging! To mark the occasion, I’ve selected my Top Ten books for Ten years of Book Blogging… and I’m also partnering with local bookshop, Book Space Cardiff, to offer free copies of How to Start a Book Blog: A Step by Step Guide via Instagram (scroll down for more details).
A lot has changed in those ten years. I started the book blog because (after being made redundant from a job I loved) I was fed up, bored, and jealous of a friend who had a blog, and I also had quite a lot of time on my hands… Continue reading
Book Review: Witsh by Mari Ellis Dunning
There have been many fictional retellings of witch trials published in recent years, based on true stories of women who were accused of all sorts of offences. Witsh by Mari Ellis Dunning is more unsettling than most, because parts of the narrative are told from the perspective of ‘The Villagers’. This communal voice evokes an unnerving atmosphere of fear and suspicion: Continue reading
Book Review: Small Things Like These & Foster by Claire Keegan
I have always admired those who can fold an entire world into a short story, and the novella form appears to perform this feat with deceptive ease. I like the fact that you can read a novella in one sitting, but that its narrative stays with you long after you have finished reading. Perhaps the novella has more in common with the poem than we might think. Continue reading
A Review of Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent Poets
This new anthology of poems by deaf, disabled and neurodivergent poets feels weighty, in both a literal and a metaphorical sense. The poems explore a vast range of different ways in which our minds and bodies can exist or present differently, but there is a thread of oblique disruption that seems to run throughout. What intrigued me initially about this new anthology was not the poetry itself, but the front cover (which isn’t easy to look at, being an optical illusion), described on the inside page: Continue reading
Poetry Review: This Common Uncommon by Rae Howells
Can poetry protect the natural world? Can it actually change the course of events? Many poets are attempting to do just that, but it’s not often that a collection is published with a specific purpose, centred on a particular location. Rae Howells’ latest book focuses on West Cross Common, a small area of peat-based heathland on the edge of Swansea, which is currently under threat of development. But these poems do far more than protest. They celebrate the minutiae of a rare and intricate habitat, the kind of inconspicuous scrubland that many of us would normally walk past without a second glance.
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A Month of Poetry: Highlights from The Sealey Challenge
I first attempted the Sealey Challenge in 2021. The aim is to read a whole book of poetry every day throughout the month of August. And this year I decided to try it again, thinking it would be a helpful way to delve into the stack of poetry books that I’ve been meaning to read for the last few months. Although there were a couple of days when I read poetry magazines, rather than collections, I think my total of 28 out of 31 days is pretty good going. So here are my favourite books from this year’s Sealey Challenge… Continue reading
Review: New Poetry Collections by Clare E. Potter and Rhian Elizabeth
It’s been a while since I last posted a book review… so here are two new poetry collections by two local South Wales poets, both of which I highly recommend: Healing the Pack by clare e potter is published by Verve Poetry Press, and Rhian Elizabeth’s collection girls etc is published by Broken Sleep Books.
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My Top 5 Books of 2023 – Poetry
2023 has been a momentous year for my own poetic journey, but it has also led me to some intriguing poetry collections published by others. These five books were not all published in 2023, but this was the year in which I discovered them. Continue reading
My Top 5 Books of 2023 – Fiction
For me, this year has been both immensely exciting and unbelievably challenging, in more ways than one, and through it all, these novels have kept me going. I struggled to pick my top five fiction books, so I’ve added a special mention at the end. These books were not all published in 2023, but they are all fairly new… Continue reading
Creative Women: Matrix by Lauren Groff and Letters to Gwen John by Celia Paul
I’ve not managed to post many book reviews recently, as I’ve been struggling with chronic fatigue while completing my PhD and getting my own book ready for publication. So I’m going to post a few mini-reviews over the summer, reflecting on some of the incredible books I’ve read over the past year. The first two books are very different but they both focus on the experiences of women. Continue reading
Book Review: The King Arthur Trilogy by Bernard Cornwell
The other day I was searching for something new to read, and I spotted my own review of a Bernard Cornwell novel, here, on my blog. The benefit of blogging is that, despite my imperfect memory, I have an accurate record of many of the books I’ve enjoyed. This post inspired me to look up his other work, and I am now part-way through the third book of Cornwell’s King Arthur trilogy, thoroughly enjoying every page. Continue reading
Poetry review: Pearl & Bone by Mari Ellis Dunning
Pearl & Bone is Mari Ellis Dunning’s second poetry collection, focused on the theme of motherhood. Her poems are full of fragility and vulnerability, but also strength and celebration, evoking the strange miracles of pregnancy and birth. I enjoyed the simple, audible delicacy of some of these poems, especially those that use very short lines, pulling you through from start to finish. Continue reading
Book Review: Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Where The Crawdads Sing is full of despair, poverty, prejudice and loneliness beyond all imagining. But it is also a book that delights in the wonderous gifts of the natural world. It tells the heart-breaking story of Kya, the ‘marsh girl’. Her mother walks off when she is still a young child, walking away without saying goodbye or even waving. She’s too young to understand what’s going on, but then her older brothers and sisters leave too, and soon she is left alone with her father, a veteran of the war, drinking his way steadily through their small income, unpredictable in his rages. Continue reading
Poetry Review: Black Cat Bone by John Burnside and Bird-Woman by Em Strang
I have had John Burnside’s collection Black Cat Bone on loan from the library for nearly a year now, and I keep returning to his long poem ‘The Fair Chase’. There’s something mesmerising about it, not just in the compelling rhythm, but also in a narrative that never seems to end. On the one hand, it is a depiction of hunting that seems violent and bloody. On the other hand, it is a kind of doomed, ongoing quest towards a deeper understanding of the self, which can never be fully realised, reminiscent of both Actaeon and the Ancient Mariner. Continue reading
Recent Summer Reads: Historical Fiction
I’ve been busy lately (with PhD work etc.) so rather than reviewing lots of books in separate blog posts, I decided to review a few of them together. I love historical fiction, both as time travel and escapism. It’s also a genre that makes you compare your own attitudes to those of others – other people living in different times and different cultures. And though it’s difficult to pinpoint how, I am sure that some of these characters and ideas are subsumed into my subconscious and resurface, often years later, in my own poems. Continue reading
Book Review: The Word by J L George
The Word is a compelling dystopian novel, set in a future that feels unnervingly familiar. It follows the stories of five youngsters born with supernatural powers: they can compel others to obey their commands. This strange plot device could have felt gimmicky, but J L George succeeds in creating a world that is believable, and particularly unsettling as a result. It’s also an emotional rollercoaster, and a gripping read. I read the book in just two sittings. Continue reading
Poetry Review: Much With Body by Polly Atkin
Polly Atkin’s second poetry collection is a book of unpredictable creatures and their ever-changing habitats, many of which are watery or wild. The opening poem draws you in to a world where ‘Everyone is talking about the moon / The full wolf moon’, ending with the unsettling image of the sky growling and creeping forward ‘ready to take us down’. Continue reading
Book Review: The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville
The Lieutenant follows the story of Daniel Rooke, a highly intelligent young man with a passion for astronomy, who has always struggled to fit in with those around him. Set in the late eighteenth century, the book feels both rooted in its time, yet also strangely contemporary. Continue reading
Poetry Review: All the Men I Never Married by Kim Moore
I’d been looking forward to reading Kim Moore’s new collection for a while, having heard her read many of these poems at various literary festivals and events. As I opened the book and began to read, I could hear her voice in my head. These are lyrical poems, designed to be heard as well as read. They are poems that speak with a clear, unapologetic, feminist voice, breaking the taboos of acceptance and denial. Each poem feels larger on the inside than the outside, and several of the poems seem to echo in your mind, long after you’ve read them. Continue reading