Secrets Of The Dictator’s Wife, Katrina Dybzynska (Fly On The Wall Press, price: £6.99/£3.99 Ebook)

I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about dictators’ wives… usually, it’s the dictator themselves who looms large in one’s imagination. But, who would the wife of such a one be? How would they feel, generally? What would their life be like? Would a dictator be kind and gentle as a partner; cold and disinterested; or cruel?

In Secrets Of The Dictator’s Wife, we find out, in new poems which are about one woman but could, in some senses, be about others, throwing reflection out onto our own relationships, and the tendency of women/people in some partnerships towards silence, absolute acceptance of the other, and subsumption of the self in them: “I was prepared for love to fade / but not for myself to fade with it”. The poems themselves are concise and clear, often holding an analogy which is more expansive than merely itself, and so there are holes and knots in needlework; “barbed wire on top of our wall”; “champagne glasses / held too tight, cracking in my hand”; fish in aquariums versus those in “the open sea”, and so on. The pace and breath in the poems are pitch-perfect, and the overarching narrative is very deftly developed.

Winner of the Aryamati Prize 2022, this slim volume contains ghosts and tyrants, war and “villains”, but the viewpoint – that of a woman who becomes “a reflection of someone else” – is far more homely, mundane, and, for some of us, familiar. Perhaps she is a mirror for many of us, too. An unflinching, thoughtful, and imaginative volume of work.

All About Our Fathers, Vasiliki Albedo, Mary Mulholland & Simon Maddrell (Nine Pens, price: £7.50)

Following on from Nine Pens’ All About Our Mothers collection comes this latest book, All About Our Fathers, featuring three poets offering roughly 10 new poems a piece. The theme, of course, is fathers, and the complexity of these figures is great, because otherwise what would there be to write about?

“Sending me flowers / with the right hand, while your left / is over my mouth” writes Vasiliki Albedo about hers. In Mary Mulholland’s poems, a strong father who “smells of gunshot” later grows weak, ill: “I don’t know why he used to frighten me. / These days he’s a child I don’t want to have / to look after”. And, for Simon Maddrill, there is sexual abuse alongside the caregiving, the football matches, the parental pride, with the father’s “vice-like grip” on a chin to the young poet’s combed hair, but also on the poet’s entire youth, crushing, controlling, and causing great hurt.

All three in All About Our Fathers are accomplished writers (another ‘of course’). Physical strength, time, violence and loss are some of the subjects that wind through all of the poems generally, providing a pleasing thematic coherence to the collected trio. Though there are incidents that shock and stories that disturb, over all the power of the poems comes from their ability to intertwine different scenes, senses, and emotions into a cohesive narrative whole. However, the three writers, whilst there are thematic links, are all very different, and it’s this multifaceted, multi-voiced rendering that makes this such a great book (of course!). A riveting read all round.

Miracles, Connor Allen (Lucent Dreaming, price: £10)

The first of two books I’ve been sent by Connor Allen – the current Children’s Laureate For Wales – is for children. It’s called Miracles because, as Allen writes, “During my tenure … my whole aim and ethos has been to empower children across Wales to consider themselves miracles”. How lovely! The new poetry book’s central section, therefore, features a selection of writings by these young voices, which must be thrilling for them and is part of Allen’s commendable plan to “empower” them and “demystify poetry”.

The other two sections of the book feature Allen’s own verse for children, which might be serious or playful, although generally, the tendency is mostly towards self-understanding, self-acceptance, and other moral issues. My understanding is that this might, perhaps, be due to the ‘asks’ that are placed on the Children’s Laureate in terms of their engagement with young people and what they are required to deliver.

Still, the poems in Miracles are fun to read, lively and upbeat and would be even better, I feel, if I heard them read or performed aloud. The key word throughout it all is ‘inspiring’, and there’s plenty here which offers that and which gives a sense of empowerment to the reader, too, irrespective of their age. I enjoyed it, and you will too!

Say It With Me, Vanessa Lampert (Seren, price: £9.99)

The debut poetry collection by Vanessa Lampert, Say It With Me is wry, witty, and lyrical, with recollections and observations that are succinct, lucidly drawn, and moving. There’s a rich seam of humour, and a nice balance between the domestic and the more eternal – in fact, they are often intertwined, as they are in life itself, with the doing the laundry one minute, death or loss occurring in the next. Death is inherent within life, therefore, but there are moments in which “grief would never dare to touch my life”, and these are documented rather more in this new poetry collection than in many others I have read, where there is often a more typical focus on sadnesses and sorrows. That makes this book immediately more refreshing.

Lampert does not ignore sadness, however, but the balance is more towards joyful moments: a house “humming with quiet hope”; meetings and stays with friends; beauty, in the form of young poets and in youth itself – “We were untethered, / headlong. We would always be this young”. In a remarkable extension of this and highly imaginative feat, the poet even brings those who have passed back to life, envisioning her father, her brother, as still with her… There is joy, too, mixed with an undercurrent of sorrow.

I think the best analogy for Say It With Me comes from the poem Dig Deeper: “Then she caught my tear in a teaspoon. / We planted it in a pot of earth. / I swear to you now, it grew.” The transmutation of grief into growth isn’t something every poet can manage, but Lampert achieves this miracle. An uplifting and touching read, as a result.

Before We Go Any Further, Tristram Fane Saunders (Carcanet, price: £11.69/£9.35 Ebook)

Another first poetry collection here, and one which is also quite unusual, this time in its use of rhyme, rhythm and form, which are quite rightly described as “unconventional” and which give Before We Go Any Further an exciting feeling of originality and unpredictability. It’s pretty amazing how the exact words we all know and use can be rearranged to create something startling and new, and this is apparent in some extremely playful examples, e.g. the poem entitled Weather About The Talking (see what he did there?).

A selection of poems towards the middle of the book use just one of the vowels in each of them (univocalic poetry, for those who like to know the technical literary term) but what’s even more unusual about them is their playful parodying of ‘Welsh elegy’ and ‘Irish drinking jig’ for these, in addition. Because, this is a poet who’s endlessly inventive, and as part of that he borrows from all sorts of sources, adding greatly to the richness of the reader’s experience.

Alongside – embedded within – the playfulness, however, are tenderness and heart: “My / hand in your pockets, your hair in my face. / Like a beating toffee apple, my heart in your mouth”. There is yearning, “applause”, anger: “what good’s a page against the whole damn world”? Emotion and invention are blended together, therefore, and neither is simply its own sake (which would make for very bad poet indeed). This is very good. Very, very good. Fiona Benson and Don Paterson endorse the book, and I do, too! Highly recommended.

A Method, A Path, Rowan Evans (Bloomsbury, price: £8.99/£7.99 Ebook)

Another debut – so many brilliant first-time authors! – this time from Rowan Evans, who is inventive, also, but in a different way to Fane Saunders. It’s hard to say what the differences might be, when I try to analyse them – but when I think about it, it seems due mainly to tone.

The tone of Before We Go Any Further feels generally cheeky; the style of A Method, A Path is, by comparison, more sombre. Some of the pieces in this book seem to tend towards incantation or invocation: take the poem Riddle, in which rhyme and repetition cause a song- or spell-like effect: “old-cloak / black-flag / spin-of-wrist / in the mind-snow”. Diagrams appear which are part-scientific in their look, part occult, to my mind; there is physical shapeshifting (“figure yourself as wulf & bird”); and the collection itself ends with what is called a Tide Ritual.

Moreover, Evans is inspired by / engages with Old English and many other voices in this collection, giving it a contemporary as well as timeless feel; indeed, the poet possesses a PhD in modern poetry and early medieval languages, which makes for an intriguing web of influence, construction, and word choice throughout the collection. This, too, might explain its tone / ‘feel’, which seems rather like Beowulf one minute, and more towards the modern nature writing of Robert Macfarlane the next.

However, to make comparisons or potential marketing-style analogies are not terribly apt, really, because Evans is not like anyone else I’ve ever read. A Method, A Path an excellent collection of new poetry that is unusual, intelligent, evocative, and full of rich musicality.