"Sea-ravaged, sea-remade"

Hot Cockalorum -- A City Under the Sea -- Four Hipflasks -- Garden Physic

A round-up for the first two weeks of September. Many books and a review!:

Larkeekies, Thunderseeds, Meldery and More

This month I’ve added Hot Cockalorum by Kirsten Irving to my bookshelf. I helped Kirsty pick out these poems from her archive of drafts, then refine and order them into a manuscript, so it’s tremendously satisfying to see them in the form of a hardback book in reclaimed leather, with a little cat skull on the cover, courtesy of Guillemot Press. Hot Cockalorum is full of strange words and phrases, sinister tales and modern reworkings of folk stories. Just in time for my autumn poetry module!

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Lyonesse by Penelope Shuttle

I’ve published a short review of one of my favourite collections of last year over on my ‘Share Your Toys’ blog. It starts:

Lyonesse (Bloodaxe, 2021) presents a problem. On the one hand, it’s tricky to talk about because I don’t feel able to map out the book’s depths. Parts of it remain sunken and mysterious to me – I can claim no commanding vantage point, despite having browsed it on-off for a couple of months and read some of the poems upwards of a dozen times.

On the other hand, it’s tricky to talk about because it describes itself, its themes and its subject matter clearly enough without any need for me to add gloss. In the preface and on the cover and in the poems themselves we are introduced to Lyonesse as “a submerged land”, “a city under the sea”, “an emblem of human frailty in the face of climate change”,  “a fluid magical world”, “a feasting-cup city”, “just what you want it to be / streets paved / with the sea”. And in a sense, this is all we need to know; the poems expand on and exemplify these core traits, even foreseeing my present dilemma by referring to Lyonesse as “a place of paradox”.

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The Hipflask Series

Over at Sidekick Books, we’ve finally launched the Hipflask Series, four brand new multi-author collections that delve into the various meeting points between poetry and other written forms. For the most part, they do what they say on the tin: a book of games to play, a book of love-hate stories, a book of misquotations, a book of hidden messages. It would be a great help to us if people could start ordering them or asking after them at bookshops, as we’re hoping to get them stocked as far and wide as possible.

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Reading

I’ve jumped into Garden Physic by Sylvia Legris — a book that, on evidence thus far, attempts to get as close as possible to simulating the experience of wandering through a well-tended, assiduously organised garden of herbs and flowers. Not much narrative but abundant tresses and thickets of descriptive language. Plenty of words I don’t know. Review at some point, if I can find the right angle on it!