The best recent poetry – review roundup

Passion by David Morley; Versus Versus edited by Rachael Boast; So What by Frederick Seidel; In the Hollow of the Wave by Nina Mingya Powles; Transfigurations by Jay WrightPassion by David Morley (Carcanet, £12.99) David Morley’s ardent, vividly alive latest collection draws on his Romany background and knowledge as an ecologist and naturalist. The poems weave the dynamism of the Romany language with English to celebrate our intimacy with the natural world’s vast mystery and beauty: “from elm top to hedgerow … from harebell to whitethroat: / Sorí simensar sí men, / Sorí simensar sí men.” (We are all one.) This evocative braid of language is also used to consider the aching cruelty of oppression – “The gavvers kettle the Travellers on the market square. / The locals stand by gawking, piss-taking” – as well as the defiant, quicksilver power of Romany language and community. “Nouns grew spry and spring-heeled /… words which Travellers / might ride, or hide behind from hard law /… But spoken language moves / like meltwater under ice. Speech thaws into life.”Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets, edited by Rachael Boast (Bloodaxe, £14.99) This anthology is a dizzying, continent-crossing explosion of verse, its topics and styles as individual as the poets; revelling in the diversity of a community that is often boxed in by ableism and prejudice. A potent theme of resisting limits courses through the book. Lateef McLeod’s poem pushes back against others’ definitions: “I am too pretty for your Ugly Laws, / too smooth to be shut in”, while Mishka Hoosen’s work celebrates the power and agency of those who think and live differently: “I am that howl / in the night ward. I am electric / without your help.” In a period in the UK when disabled people’s rights and living conditions are under threat, this collection feels timely. As Maya Abu-Hayyat suggests: “They will fall in the end, / those who say you can’t.” Continue reading...

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