Rookie, Caroline Bird (Carcanet, price: £12.99/£10.39 Ebook)

The testimonials on Rookie are perfect: “fun” says one. “Full of surprises” says another. But my favourite is by current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage: “Bird is irrepressible; she simply explodes with poetry.” Here, then, is proof positive that poetry is anything but dull, still, stiff, staid; that, in fact, it can jive and joust, be funny and fluid, flexing like a muscle, and just as eye-boggling and attractive.

My preferred poems, however, are those which are less cerebral and more personal, though whether the ‘I’s in these are Bird or another person isn’t always clear. The Tree Room, as one example, tells of someone making a Christmas tree decoration following a detox in a hospital or medical unit. The contrast between this simple, silly activity that the participants find solace in and “the sad, violent details of their respective returns to the world” is highly emotive, and the poem itself is unpretentious and pared back – making it incredibly effective.

But there are so many powerful poems here, particularly towards the end of this selected volume, where themes of death, birth, and sanity pitch up in many of the pieces. Less ‘fun’ than ‘fundamental’ here, then, but still always full of inventiveness and imagination. A truly excellent selection of poems from across Bird’s collections, Rookie isn’t rookie-like at all: it’s the work of a master. Poets and non-poets alike, please read it.

The Thought Sits With Me, Ruth Beddow (Nine Pens, price: £7.50)

Concepts of house and home loom large in this The Thought Sits With Me pamphlet. In fact, ‘home’ features in the first line of the first poem, and ‘house’ in the first line of the second, and there are, within the opening lines of many other poems, similar words, references to building or buildings, images of windows and attics, hotels and libraries, ‘pre-fabs’ and chimneys, living rooms and bedrooms. There’s a sense of home as shifting – or insubstantial, even ‘subsiding’, in these pieces, however, which give an impression of life’s impermeability. They also, for me, mirror the housing crisis, but there are intimations, too, of those without homes: people in transit, people on the run, people moving and travelling.

The poems are confessional in style, with a pleasingly plain and unpretentious manner. Many seem to address memories and recollections, or lack of these – “the home / we barely remember” – and, whilst the cover features suitably colourful illustrations of ice lollies beloved by children, there was a slight melancholy to these pieces for me. Even when fantasising about Mississippi, for example, the poet envisages the sky as “taller, sadder / than any sky could ever seem”. I liked this mood, however, as well as the frankness of many of the poems, which address those ever-popular poetic topics of sex and death in some cases. Additionally, a poet who isn’t afraid to put lard, fromage frais, cabbage patch dolls, “dick, plain and simple”, nipple hair, omelette and chips, maxi pads, and “a box room rammed with porn parodies” in her poems is one who is undoubtedly brave and honest and, for me, very much worth reading.

Cracked Asphalt, Sree Sen (Fly On The Wall Press, price: £6.99)

Another writer concerned with the question of home is Sree Sen, who moved from Mumbai to Dublin. I liked, in these, how yearning for the sweet home comforts of that birthplace, such as “spicy / ginger tea” is tempered by the realisation that, back there, the author was “familiar with brutality” with her “gender in the wrong place” – at least, here, “I’m free to chop off my hair”; and, Sen admits, it’s “easier to love in Dublin”.

Belonging and not-belonging are explored side by side in Cracked Asphalt. Like Beddow, Sen has the word ‘home’ in the first lines of her opening poem, setting a significant theme, but continued images then are of the earth itself: dust, floor, asphalt. The poet trudges the streets as part of a fundraising role, but also she’s saying more about roots, and feeling rooted, here. Can one put roots down if one is forever shifting? Or if one was born in another place? Feelings of guilt at her new-found life intertwine with explorations of home, relationships that change, and identity itself.

Lightly written, but with deeply considered and complex themes and insights, these are poems which still reach for, and encompass, life’s loveliness, even beauty, despite the fracturing and splintering living itself engenders. Here is poetic kintsugi, essentially! The golden line of asphalt on the book’s cover also points to this interpretation. Another great success for that most excellent press, Fly On The Wall.

Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere, Angela Graham (Seren, price: £9.99)

Moving beyond ‘home’ to the concept of ‘sanctuary’ is this collection, Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere, in which author Graham also includes/invites poems from five other contributors. The theme of the book is that, in these turbulent times, sanctuary can be quite hard to find. Where does it lie? Well, here are poems which explore that query and attempt to find out, evoking ideas and evincing emotions along the way as we traverse bombed cities and chapels, evacuation sites and shrines, lakes, holy wells, and even the body itself which, in the poem Chronic is no longer a refuge but a place in which “pain expels me from myself”. Eventually, the book leads to a hopeful conclusion, in which the poet affirms, “We are a home for one another”. This is the bottom line and, fittingly, the final line of the collection.

I found the poems in this book finely written and thoughtful. Despite the intelligence and philosophical loftiness, which I sometimes feel prohibits poets from delivering into the dirt via language and image, Graham is a poet who doesn’t shy away from this, delivering, as well as literal bombs, the ‘f-bomb’ in one poem; neither is she one who is unable to explore or touch on concepts of divinity and use of the word ‘God’, which I find more f-bomb prone, gritty poets perhaps feel their own fear of and are less likely to address. Therefore, this comes across as an open-minded collection, and the poems, as mentioned, are very finely wrought, whether by Graham or by her guests. This is a generous inclusion, of course, but Graham is a poet who is skilled and sublime enough, I imagine, not to feel any threat from it or, indeed, from anyone or anything at all.

Gwrthryfel / Uprising: An Anthology Of Radical Poetry From Contemporary Wales, Mike Jenkins [ed.] (Culture Matters, price: £12)

Acclaimed poet, co-editor of Red Poets annual magazine/institution, and all-around rabble-rouser (in the best and most enlightened way) Mike Jenkins edits this anthology of leftward-leaning verse, from some of the poets of Wales. I sometimes contribute to Red Poets and can assure you that, whatever your political leanings, Jenkins is an inclusive editor. The voices within any of his prodigious poetic gatherings are as diverse as possible and represent a full, round, and very sweeping wealth of human experiences.

As a result, this book holds over 150 pages of voices and views, and its range encompasses not just Wales but also journeys further afield. Class cuts across all countries and cultures, is the message here, and this is demonstrated in poems that are profound or personal: overtly political in some cases, but in others painting a micro rather than a macro point of view, with empathy as much a part of proceedings as justifiable anger at times.

There are many excellent poems in this anthology, including by former National Poet Of Wales Ifor ap Glyn, and one of the most renowned poets Wales possess in this era, Menna Elfyn. Overall, there are 80 poets’ pens in the mix, and the quality is such that this book proves, to me, that Wales is truly a land of bards. Simply brilliant.