Shoogle Tide 

The latest anthology from Earlyworks Press [has a] global scope with dispatches from Nepal, Rio, Hanoi, County Roscommon, and Basingstoke. From this diversity, continuities and conflicts that shape lives emerge. In the opening poem, Margaret Eddershaw notes the 'unequal neighbours', divided by class and geography, yet equally prone to mudslides in Brazil. Social and psychological menace are also evident in R D Gardner's Riot Weather. Elsewhere, Gardner taps out the tensions and ties between generations as Irish grandmothers 'in black / Are dancing death metal, at night, in the road.'

Religion figures in Sylvia Oldroyd's Funeral in Rome, while closer to domestic climes Michael Heery's What is Home? describes where 'we...wallow in communion.' Likewise, R J Hansford intimates how through poetry 'flesh' can 'become word'. David R Morgan and Amy Licence tease out the power of memory in Smaller Magic and Family Holdiay. On a related theme, Phil Powley's Journey Without End ends in a killer couplet interleaving rhyme, alliteration, and the pasts and presents mirrored in a train's window: 'And as we slowed, long after we were due, / the boy I was would wave as we passed through.'

The collection coheres marvelously and reaches out to the literally universal. In Ruary O Siochain's The Gravity of Yearning, the push and pull of the sea and the moon are more than merely physical as the Sea of Tranquility 'keens her loss'.

From a review by Adam Hansen. 

Full review text and more information on new poetry books  in SOUTH 37, April 2008