Angela Cleland's first collection follows her superb debut pamphlet, Waiting to Burn, one of the three winners in the inaugural Templar Poetry Pamphlet & Collection Awards.
"Perhaps the best pieces here are longer ones – a week-length sequence of London morning vignettes; a song-like performance piece about a man sinking emotionally under his own guilt which makes fine use of repetitions; the final poem, which imagines the youthful Shelley setting off fire balloons carrying copies of the Declaration of Rights, is a rare example of a poem in a historical voice working with freshness. This is a varied, interesting first collection from a younger poet." (Roddy Lumsden, Books from Scotland)
"Angela Cleland’s first full collection is quite a tour de force. Cleland has a taste for the surreal, the quirky, the sinister, and she explores her subjects with humour and a deliciously fresh approach to form, taking risks that pay off. Cleland’s material encompasses every kind of human and other relationship – she is fascinated by personality and by the inner world of her characters. The ways in which she shocks and disturbs the reader are both authentic and enticing, from the spooky sense of isolation in ‘Wool and air’ and ‘Your art’ to the bizarre imaginative longing of ‘Peeling’. The middle section of the collection showcases the poet’s experiments with form, including shape poetry – I enjoyed the inventiveness of ‘Fig 1’ and ‘The Rain Gauge’. This collection is a really good read." (Clare Best, The Frogmore Papers)
"There is a delicious sumptuousness to Angela Cleland’s poetry. Words slot into their allotted spaces with satisfying clunks that continue to resound long after you put down this debut collection." (Judy Darley, essentialwriters.com)
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