St Eisenberg And The Sunshine Bus, Annick Yerem (Hedgehog Press, price: £7.99/£3.99 PDF)

Some of the poems in this luminescent collection address childhood, in particular its dreams and dramas. They give an impression of the magical sense of that time whilst also encompassing its very real pains: “when i was young / i held in the palm of my hand / the wonders the heartbreaks…” Intertwined with these are poems dealing with the loss of a parent that are more generally suffused with sadness: “i need to remember you / i’m still listening still here…”

The immediacy of recent grief combines with this, looking further back to give an impression of a poet seeking pattern. Those hurts from childhood have been transmuted to meaning already, as in the poem Traces – in which Yerem details the reasons for what we imagine are bodily scars, but the ‘scar’ of a more recent loss has not yet been reasoned. Neither is that scar physical, as is alluded to in another poem, Fifty: “the branches ripping my trousers, my heart…” The title poem of this collection, which revolves around the imagined receipt of ‘signs’, further supports this interpretation – that the poet is attempting to resolve her grief.

Altogether, St Eisenberg… is highly emotive stuff that greatly affects the reader, but additionally there’s a pleasing pace and form to many pieces, and a knack of adding just enough detail – of place, people, or objects – to ‘paint’ the scene (often a memory) and bring it springing to life. It’s in poetry that we can remember, recall, but, more than this, reanimate and give a lasting ‘life’ through our words: a theme evoked in one poem, the making. In the following poem to this, shelves, rooms, houses are shown not to last, but this neat poem pairing reinforces the idea that poetry and words may do. Wrought, realistic, personal, and profound, these are tender and poignant works.

Ten Lines Or More Than Just Love Notes, Sarah James (Loughborough University, price: £12)

Each poem in this pamphlet contains just, yes, 10 lines. Still, it’s surprising how much experimentation is contained within this little book, a seemingly diminutive form – there are poems cut in half, poems in fading type, poems in sequence, poems shaped to represent a clock, poems that whirl around the page like a windmill. Much inventiveness here, then, and this gives the book a liveliness and energy even as its subjects focus on the immediate and the everyday.

In a similar manner, however, just as James transmutes 10 lines into myriad intriguing forms, the subjects of each piece are expanded from the domestic and mundane – breakfast, beetles, magpies, a wall – into something more far-reaching, philosophical, and eternal. It speaks of a mind that’s meditative as well as imaginative, and that isn’t contained or restrained by the mundanities within reach; rather, these are stepping stones to higher insights and infinite realms, best summarised by the final lines of one of the poems, in which “Lost stars linger in the last small puddles”. Like a lot of those working with the magic of words that we call poetry, I found myself wondering as I read if there wasn’t a bit of witch about James herself – hedgewitch, perhaps – not that it really matters, of course. What does matter is that anyone can pick up this book, flick to a page, and immerse into a reality that’s familiar, at first, before expanding almost immediately into something more – from micro, to macro, to cosmic. And, within the restraint of just 10 lines, that’s a marvel, marvellously done.

Notes From A Shipwreck, Jessica Mookherjee (Nine Arches Press, price: £10.99)

Coincidentally – or maybe not; this is poetry, after all – the next book I read is also particularly imaginative and experimental in its scope, this time in terms of its phrasing, sentence structure, and syntax, all tools used to sharpen and define imagery. Again, a line from an early poem, Plague Rounds, shows what I mean: “I’m swarm, flooding, and boils”. That little list contains a noun that is singular but contains a plurality; a verb in continuous tense; and another noun that is plural but contains singularities. Neat, eh?

The end result is a meld of images that, like paint, swirl together to create something new, with an unusual taint, and I think the thoughtfulness of this one sentence also points to a careful and rather painterly poet, too. As much as this sentence might demonstrate tightness and refinement, there are other areas in the book which are more oceanic, holding swathes of imagery that wash over the reader, and others still which are more delineated and narrative in their scope. Rich tapestries of history and myth intertwine, there are touches of surrealism (“I gave a heron a lift to the coast…”), and the overall sense is of a textured, multi-layered work, encompassing a host of voices and stories. A book with depths and depths and depths.

Stephen The Phlebotomist, Nadia Lines (Nine Pens, price: £7.50)

What I really like about the poems in this book are the juiciness and beauty of what’s described in them, which might be mundane (“root vegetables and labour”) but also might be lush, quirky, or profound, or even a mix of all of these. Thus, sunflowers might be “dopey”, cucumbers inspire “tenderness”, a dog’s paw on a windowpane spreads “like a flower”. The reader can’t predict the poet’s vision of things, and that makes for an interesting and eventful experience when opening this book.

There’s a slight religiosity as one thread in the pamphlet, but it’s the precise opposite of preachy, as evinced by the poem When The Hoover Sucked Up My Crucifix: “Imagine / us unscrewing the head of the hoover / to look for the body of God”. There’s a further sense in these pieces of life being miraculous – and brief. A poem to Keats demonstrates this, whilst a poem to Edward Cullen, the vampire from Twilight, is written ‘straight’, without irony, a double sonnet dedicated to the character as he dies of Spanish flu. In view of the pandemic – Stephen… also addresses a year that the author spent indoors – this poem takes on a new light. Perhaps the poet’s attitude to poetry could be best summarised by these lines from one of the pieces: “everything was communicable, really”. There are no ideas on what is or isn’t poetic – this pamphlet offers up all – and people, too, are equally interesting, with the book itself dedicated “to the people within it”. Overall, this makes for a lively collection of poems that’s unpredictable, honest, and just fun to read.

Closure, Nick Fisk (Square Books, price: £4/£2 Ebook)

Fisk’s Fiskian view of the world – direct, jokey, slightly blokey, often knowing but also a little bit puzzled – is again the filter that we see through in this latest pamphlet. Closure is the final part in his Funny Business trilogy, with those books having been reviewed in this column previously. ‘Fiskian’ is the style of Fisk, and those tomes, like this, were deserving of the word.

There’s a jovial, sometimes sardonic, sense to these pieces, which veer of here and there into something that comes across as more of an in-joke; but, there’s never malice, usually there is a pleasing amiability to Fisk’s style, apart from in a couple of poems, including The Fucking Cunts, which details an unwanted intrusion by others into a home. A rescue, a rehabilitation, an imprisonment? We don’t really know.

Fisk is, in this poem, slightly angry, but generally he tends more towards a more wry and dry view of the world, that veers here and there into what looks like surrealism but sometimes feels as if his view has become more skewered – rather than choice, it could be a more lasting change in vision. Still, it makes for an interesting read, the style is easy to engage with, and there’s a personal bent to the pieces which gives an impression that you’re being loaded with secrets by your mate at the pub: Fisk the confidante. Fisk the barfly pal? Fisk the poet is a recommended read.