Diary of the Last Man – Robert Minhinnick
An extraordinary book. A meticulously crafted, searching, profoundly atmospheric meditation on humanity and place in our epoch. There is no poetry I admire more than this.
Bright Travellers – Fiona Benson
Fiona Benson deservedly won the Forward Prize this year for her most recent collection, ‘Vertigo and Ghost’. However her first collection, ‘Bright Travellers’, still resonates with me. I am interested in how poetry and visual art can speak to each other; and the sequence, ‘Love-Letter to Vincent’ is a beguiling example of this. Her poetry has such poise.
The Republic of Motherhood – Liz Berry
This pamphlet was instrumental in reviving my interest in poetry and creativity after the births of my two sons. A poetic testament to all that is beautiful and ugly about motherhood.
Imagined Sons – Carrie Etter
Etter’s prose poems are like runes and they linger in the mind like lucid dreams. A haunting and deeply moving exploration of maternal love, loss and guilt.
The Perseverance – Raymond Antrobus
This formally inventive debut collection by British-Jamaican poet, Raymond Antrobus is located in the interstices of a hearing and non-hearing world, belonging and alienation, self-belief and its erosion, history and present. There is such a fresh and robust quality to the language of the poems. I return to them again and again.
Laura Wainwright was born in Cardiff and grew up in Newport, South Wales where she still lives. She is author of a book of literary criticism, New Territories in Modernism: Anglophone Welsh Writing 1930-1949 (University of Wales Press, 2018). She was shortlisted in the Bridport Prize poetry competition in 2013 and 2019. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Black Bough Poetry, Burning House Press, Animal Heart Press, Wales Haiku Journal, Picaroon Poetry, Lucent Dreaming, Re-Side and Poetry Birmingham.