New year, same Mab Jones, and we mean that in the best possible way! The 2025 account is opened with four titles ranging from the widely shared Scots-dialect ‘poyums’ of Len Pennie to seasoned Welsh rabblerouser Patrick Jones to a posthumous collection by Palestinian Refaat Alareer.

poyums, Len Pennie (Canongate, price: £14.99)
As a stage poet – who later became a page poet – I know all too well how poetry that is performed can be sneered at. This is because rhyme is seen as lowbrow – though when you point out that the most popular form of poetry, rap, also usually rhymes, the people who sneer suddenly shut their mouths because they don’t want to seem racist. Classist, though, that’s OK…
Anyway, snobs aside, Len Pennie is a terrific performance poet whose pieces nearly always rhyme; and, in terms of type of rhyme, they are nearly always rhyming couplets. Not always, but mostly. This gives the poems a lively, push-along pace which I’m sure gives them great appeal when read aloud. The subject matter is bold and brave, addressing injustice, prejudice, objectification of women’s bodies, “lassie bashin”, and other topics. Pennie is fighting fierce and furiously forthright in many of these, sometimes writing in a Scots accent / dialect that’s refreshingly direct as well as sharp as nails.
Altogether, it’s heady, highly affecting stuff. Highbrow? Thankfully, no, but accessible, unpretentious, and brave in its truth-telling instead. A bestseller already, read it when you can and catch Pennie in person as soon as possible.

A Constellation Of Sorrows, Patrick Jones (R*E*P*E*A*T, £4-£20)
From this truth teller to another: Patrick Jones is one of the most incendiary voices not just in Wales but the UK. ‘Incendiary’ can mean setting alight, or inciting others; it is also “a weapon or device that starts a fire”. Here, on this new album with Jones’ speaking voice backed by music, the weapons are words, finely honed, and the ideas and images, persons and panoramas that they capture are their kindling.
Since Jones’ fuel, here, is war, injustice, politics, lies, and the pain and suffering of the innocent – particularly in relation to Gaza/Palestine – that fire is cleansing, burning and, at times, painful, rather than anything cosy and warming. However, there is light, also – as you would expect from fire – and this poet’s trademark is his ability to lift, through poetry, upwards, towards hope and ideals of community and collectivism. The body is diminished, the bones wither and die – there is suffering – but, these poems tell us, the heart and the soul shine on and through.
The devices in these pieces might be sharp alliteration, emotive assonance – “this mantra of the murderers, this hymn of the hate-filled, these verses of the violent…” – rhyme, rhythm, or methods such as repetition; these work to elevate the subject matter, adding artistry and beauty, and a kind of lyricism which fits well with the musical element. Structurally, the album begins with the voice of a politician spouting rhetoric, and ends with a Palestinian stating personal experience: a powerful book-ending that makes a lasting impression on the listener.
The powerful, “draped in medals and flags and blood”, are truly brought to task, here, whilst the innocent are buried Under The Rubble: “amputated, cut, demolished, desecrated”. However, as in this poet’s last work, there is Light, here; there is hope; there is a continuation of love, family, and life. I listened to the album at the darkest time of year; felt the fire; and was transformed. You will be too.

If I Must Die: Poetry And Prose, Refaat Alareer (OR, price: £9-£19)
As if to fuel the fire further, this next book in my list comes courtesy of a beautiful writer who lost his life in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City in 2023. A resident of a wartorn area, then, this collection – compiled by Refaat Alareer’s closest friend following his loss – showcases a selection of poetry and prose which detail the writer’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences, as well as those around him. Many of the stories are, understandably, politically charged, with terrible and tragic events described.
Throughout the book, poems appear alongside these prose works, each of them lighter and more lyrical in style, but ultimately containing the same stories of loss, death, and injustice. The paper in the book is pale, but these pieces are presented on black paper, highlighting the starkness of the situation in that land. “It shall pass, I keep hoping. It shall pass, I keep saying… And as Gaza keeps gasping for life, we struggle for it to pass, we have no choice but to fight back and to tell her stories. For Palestine.”
The poems and pieces in this book are present, profound, and ultimately, for the reader, catalysing. They stand witness to a human who was full of insight, intelligence, and empathy, with a heart that, in these pieces, has the power to transcend all borders. Utterly inspiring.

After The Rites And Sandwiches, Kathy Pimlott (Emma Press, price: £7.99)
Death is something everyone will experience: the demise of others, as well as ourselves. Sorry for the stark start to this review, but that makes death one of the greatest, grandest subjects in poetry. In this pamphlet, Kathy Pimlott begins with it; in a way, it is the ‘birth’ of the entire book.
In a short list, within the poem How to be a widow, we are given a kind of backstory / chronology: “I was on the phone, then peeling potatoes, / then scrubbing a tea-stained mug and then he was dead.” Death is as everyday as these domestic acts, the poet intimates; and so, following the sudden loss of her partner due to a fall downstairs in their home, Pimlott picks up her pen to write with truth and tremendous attention to the minutiae of, and ministrations around, sudden and unexpected loss.
The grief here is wonderfully woven through with further domestic detail, for example a listing of tasks relating to the death of a loved one – particularly in a series of short, ‘death admin’ poems – and social and other navigations that result from it. There is an acceptance, and sharing, of the lost love’s past indiscretions – “I told him / how often you fell in and out of love and how I left and returned / more than once” – this information reframing the relationship not as some Romeo and Juliet ideal but as a fallible, imperfect, and ultimately real thing.
Throughout such unabashed honesty, there’s a gorgeous mix of clear-eyed plain-talk, plus a lucidity of language and even playfulness – slight, wry humour that’s entirely refreshing. And so, the book ends with the poem Coda: Tips on avoiding the offered consolations of Religion and Therapy, which is just hilarious, a true hoot. I won’t spoil it for you – just get the book, and see how well and wonderfully it, and After The Rites itself, is done. Death’s a familiar topic, sure, but in clever hands it’s forever new: in this book, it’s as fresh and fierce, sorrowful and strange, as ever it was.
If you would like to submit some new, published poetry for potential review in this column, contact Mab via her website (you can find social media links there) or get in touch via Buzz.
words MAB JONES