Queerfella

There’s a real consistency of voice throughout and an indomitable sense of the poet facing up to their chosen subject matter; ‘no wonder we escape bodies that sink /
or encage ourselves in sewered shame’. ‘There was a hole’ and ‘Alright really’ are deceptively simple poems – and all the more powerful for it – which make use of a fine storytelling gift. ‘I am not straight’ is a particularly good example of a very tender form of directness. ‘Life imitates porn’ has an extraordinary final couplet: ‘the cum face is fake / & the dicks are on drugs’. Great variety and play, e.g. the ‘demi-ekphrastic poem’ ‘Cock & Balls’. The last two poems, ‘Three Crows’ and ‘Half-rotten, Half-new’ – both in part about fathers and forgiveness – are stunning: open, redemptive, beautiful.

Will Harris.