Suzanna Fitzpatrick's The Deeper Read

In the context of a review culture in which hot takes, pseudo blurbs and cod-academic posturing are rife, it's a huge breath of fresh air to encounter a critic who engages with a poet and their poetry, who gets to grips with the nuts and bolts of every line, who reaches far beyond a mere description of thematic concerns, all without lapsing into jargon or self-aggrandisement.

This is why I'm thoroughly recommending Suzanna Fitzpatrick's The Deeper Read today. It's a regular Substack where she delves deeply into one collection at a time. Her writing and insights are terrific in their clarity, worthy of a wider audience and way more interesting than most reviews that can be found in major journals, even the essay-length ones, so I'm not taking restricted words counts as an excuse here. In fact, Fitzpatrick's showing up a fair few bigger names in The Deeper Read. I suggest you explore its archive via this link, but with one warning: it's likely to provoke you into purchases of poetry books that you'd never heard of and suddenly need...!