There is a new review of David Calcutt’s first poetry collection: The last of the light is not the last of the light…. ahead of its launch on 28th June
It is by Ken Evans and is on The Manchester Review website – the full review can be read here
Here are a few parts of the review lifted out from the really well written and thoughtful review:
“With an elemental stylistic simplicity of few punctuation-marks and little capitalisation, Calcutt’s work suggests a fabular world beneath everyday surfaces, of mythopoeic themes of nature, change and underworlds; of rites, quests, spells, dreams and incantations….
Calcutt’s career in radio and theatre drama is evidenced not only in his highly visual writing, but also in his attention to sounds, often playful as well as evocative, as in the poem, ‘Hob Jack.’ A rat in the water, ‘Hair-twitch-nose-tip/an inch above the surface’… ‘blowflies hum/and midges strum/the new dawn’s daystrings.’ Elsewhere, ‘A moorchick clacks among the reeds’, gathering the ‘scattered petals of morning.’ Hob Jack, the rat creature, finds, ‘his joy’s in the frenzy and flood of the kill/and the calm that comes after./Snick snack/the mirror cracks,/a tumble and flurry and someone goes down/to be lost forever.’ There is almost joy in the onomatopoeic language, describing death in the water.
These quotes highlight the strengths of the poems in this book, where the focus is on nature, precisely observed.”
JOIN US AT ITS LAUNCH: at Waterstones Birmingham on 28th June
or – you can buy the book from Fair Acre Press website here
Nadia x
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