To say this Sunderland-based poet’s work is accessible is to damn it with faint praise. For while his stuff is highly readable, it’s also imbued with the kind of imagery – and the kind of situations – that really makes you think. ‘In Zapruderian Detail’ (Zapruder being the fella who shot the footage of JFK being assassinated) the protagonist is mooned by a bunch of kids on a trampoline. This doesn’t annoy him. Instead we get: “the plumb line / of youthful exuberance / through these idiot kids / to my own / reckless youth / the transcendent thrill / of mooning a stranger”. Elsewhere the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ and Tick-Tock (sic) are given short shrift while the intriguingly entitled ‘Papa Smurf Was A Communist’ is as good as it sounds (“look at their smiling blues faces / does that look like oppression to you? / not a breadline in sight / if that’s communism, I’ll take it”). RM

Published by Alien Buddha Press