Matthew Paul reviews Whatever You Do, Just Don't for Wild Court

Poetry’s a long game, full of tough waits and disappointments, but all of them pale into insignificance on a humbling day when someone whose critical opinions you value, who never chucks compliments around like confetti, writes incredibly generous stuff about your book. This is one of those special days.

Thanks are due to Matthew Paul for writing an exceptional review of Whatever You Do, Just Don't for Wild Court, and thanks to Robert Selby for publishing it. Here's a quick quote as a taster, but you can read it in full via this link.

Without fanfare and with measured economy, Stewart impeccably, and unbeatably, encapsulates the impact of time and culture on the minutiae of everyday life as it both was and now is.

Julie Mellor's poetry blog

It's always a joy to discover an excellent poetry blog, and all the more so during lockdown. That's why I was delighted to encounter Julie Mellor's site the other day.

I found it via her lovely review (see here) of Matthew Paul's top-notch collection, The Evening Entertainment, at which point I realised just how much other content there was to savour as well. I'd long known that Julie Mellor was a fine poet, but her blog had somehow slipped under my radar. It's time to put that right...!

Lyrical Aye poems

I'm pleased to report that Richie McCaffery has posted a short sequence from my first full collection, The Knives of Villalejo, on his blog as part of his special feature for lockdown, Lyrical Aye Poems. You can read it by following this link. While you're there, I'd recommend a browse of the archive, which already includes excellent work by the likes of M.R. Peacocke, Matthew Paul and Chris Powici, etc, etc...

Matthew Paul and Then Again

And so I'm now back in Extremadura, following an excellent evening at the South Downs Poetry Festival in Chichester. I very much enjoyed my slot as Guest Poet, thanks to an appreciative audience and high-quality Open Mic. What's more, my visit to West Sussex enabled me to pick up several review copies of exciting collections that are due to be featured soon on Rogue Strands.

For the moment, I'd just like to draw your attention to Matthew Paul's poetry blog. Matthew, who also published his first full collection with Eyewear, wrote an excellent post, titled Then Again, a few weeks ago. It's a reflection on the use of that awkward word ("then", I mean), and it complements my own piece on the subject (see here) a few days previously. This is another example of how poetry blogs can bounce off each other, creating explicit and implicit dialogues, developing the sense of an inclusive community of readers and writers.