ALPHABET consists of twenty-six poems concerning the vagaries of failure, the underrated opposite of success. But in this case, the context of failure necessarily includes the genre of contemporary poetry, that most disabused yet over-abundant mode of expression. Why would anyone choose to express themselves in a manner that automatically narrows the readership, even after dispensing with avant-garde ambitions? – Precisely because its condition might lend itself to the aimless, useless or extra-economic moments when success can be turned on its head. And though the poet might be prone to the audience’s neglect, history itself is rife with countless examples of spectacular literary failures (as addressed in Alphabet), whether these traumas are eventually redeemed or forever lost. These examples include: misplaced manuscripts, writer’s block, articulate illiterates, libraries that were burned to the ground, posthumous fame for the previously poverty-stricken, botched yet endlessly repeated translations, along with the obvious shortcomings of the dilettante, the over-inflated ego, and the perennial loser.

“Andrew Guthrie is a poet’s poet, and his collection Alphabet views life through the lens of the written world…He explores the impermanence and the irresistibility of the written word: a topic that both troubles and delights him. These poems portray writing as a cave, ventured into by the naked poet.” Viki Holmes, author of miss moon’s class.

 “There is a metaphysical grittiness and vibrant wordplay to these twenty-six poems about the actualities of poetics and history which make Alphabet a page-turner.” John King, director of the Drunken Odyssey literary podcast.

 “Alphabet reminds us of what it is like to both drown and float in the spaces language and literature create.” Daniel Zomparelli, editor of the print magazine Poetry Is Dead.

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In THE BURNING LAKE, Jonathan Locke Hart  explores in a contemporary context the divine and human comedy, taking his inspiration from Dante, but also making and questioning poetry in a world where light shines “on abandoned tires, industrial/ Junk devoid of allegory” and in a world that is and is not real. This poetry is an exploration of mind, body and soul in an industrial and technological world that has changed so much since the great mythological worlds made by poets as great as Dante and Shakespeare. But the poem moves from this “sullen industrial waste” and fires of existential hell through the in-between and purgatorial state to one of hope and light. All this is within and without the contemporary world./ A modern day meditation on the inferno, purgatorio and paradisio of our world. Fire (hell) Between (purgatory) Light (heaven).

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In Epochal Reckonings, poet, adjunct professor and editorial writer, J.P. Linstroth describes and responds to some of the crises of the first years of the 21st century. He aims, as he puts it, to cause concern, discussion, and surprise, as well as to evoke the emotions of anger, empathy, and sadness. The events covered include the huge migrations of people seeking to cross borders, whether in the Americas, Asia, Africa, the Middle-East or Europe, hoping for safety and a better life. Linstroth also shows and comments on human and natural acts of astonishing violence: the 9/11 destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York; the Hurricane named Katrina of 2005; the  Haitian earthquake of 2010. Linstroth portrays man’s inhumanity to man, whether callous, careles

s, mistaken, or deliberate: the police-killings of African-American youths; the genocide of Brazilian indigenous

 peoples; the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison; mass school-shootings in the USA; and the Yemeni civil war. Linstroth describes his poetry as emergent and inchoate, outlining the struggles and sufferings of various groups during major crises in the 21^st century, embodied by racism, extremism, violence, and tragedies too many to be told. These poems capture such calamities, defining their symbolic significance for many of those who have experienced these disasters of our times across the globe.

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 IRREVERENT POEMS FOR PRETENTIOUS PEOPLE is an eclectic collection of poems that range from sardonically humorous to genuinely moving. The collection plays fast and loose with both language and form as it explores, among other things, linguistics, history, relationships and the absurd. Henrik Hoeg's first published collection, it was awarded a publication prize in the competition for the International Proverse Prize 2015. 

Irreverent Poems for Pretentious People will make you laugh, reflect, and look up Greek philosophers on wikipedia. I highly recommend it to anybody. 

One might say to the author, in his own words, "Come, take your words back, I’ve exhausted them.” But not for long. Irreverent Poems for Pretentious People is well worth a read, and any number of rereads.

                — Holger Anderson, poet, Copenhagen

 “Henrik Hoeg’s poems are fun to read because you can tell that they were fun to write....”

— Jadis Blurton, Hong Kong

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In The Layers Between, natural phenomena such as Matter, Water and Space are given their own voices; Philosophical concepts like Entropy, Consciousness and Information are allowed to speak for themselves; “Yin and Yan” and the biblical figure “Eve” narrate their own stories. By employing recognized scientific findings to introduce a fresh, some may call fantastical, hypothesis, the writer defamiliarises the origins of our universe, the workings of our bodies, of our minds and life itself. In this first section of the book she explains how “everything” and “nothing” are the opposite poles of one energy-frequency with a myriad scales of information layered between. She knows very well that this is a theory of mind yet to be verified; nevertheless bravely challenges existing “Theories of Everything”. The second section in the book consists of poems that draw the reader back into everyday life and its many speculative questions, by taking a closer look at the transient state of nature under the influence of time; how humans nestle into the spaces that matter provides; our attraction to and curiosity about the surreal and the spiritual; the consciousness within all sensory experiences; our craving for connective relationships and how everything that has been mentioned is nothing but recycled works of art.

“Celia Claase’s debut collection...takes one back to a moment even before the Big Bang to a present where the future is ultimately unknowable yet at the same time as close to us as our own inner layers of skin.... Claase recognizes the interrelationship of the physical and metaphysical, the seen and the unseen. ... She has the ability to cut through the illusions of material gain, security and power....The Layers Between is the recognition of ‘as above, so below’, and the joyous, yet calm, realization that samsara is nirvana and nirvana is samsara.”

Gary Cummiskey

Johannesburg. July 2015

(from his Advance Response to The Layers Between)

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“The Layers Between unfolds its philosophical conceits with a kind of artfully organic movement; flowing as it does between carefully wrought, playful monologues and compact, pithy poems...an invitation to step into the world, and inhabit it with open eyes and minds.”

Viki Holmes

author of miss moon’s class

(From her Advance Response to The Layers Between)

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Wilderness inspired poems composed on the trail by an American doctor/poet, sharing his love of the backcountry, trail-walking, camping, and the “wilderness effect,” a unique sensation of aliveness and deep connection.  Mayer’s poetry explores our human experience of the natural world, our intimate and mysterious connections to flora and fauna. It proclaims the opportunity that walking mindfully in the wilderness offers to experience the divine. The uniqueness and intensity of these musings lead his poems to attempt reconciliation of our lived experience with physics, spirit, and music, the latter manifested in his experience of singing to the dying; the wisdom of nature rendered in music and consolation.  A few poems are inspired by Mayer’s medical practice. Some spring from his ordinary life and reflections on his childhood and family, which have followed him into the woods.

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UNLOCKING is Mary-Jane Newton’s second book of verse. In this vibrant new collection, Newton evokes a life experienced in cycles, characterized by peaks and troughs, fecundity and sterility, growth and retrenchment, optimism and despair. And punctuating these cycles, an infinite array of new beginnings, or openings, or “un-lockings”. The poems in this collection insist that unlocking concerns more than simply change and transition. It involves too the stretching of the mind and body, the catharsis of deep emotion, and the rethinking of ideas and habits.

 “Mary-Jane Newton’s Unlocking is a shape shifter and unpredictable. Each poem gets to you without warning. From ache through sadness to love and resolution, she transforms a kaleidoscope of experiences and emotions into poetry, each poem a small world. Lyrical, funny, aching, brutal, loving, and forgiving, her poetry is as bold as it is gentle.”

—Rose Mary Boehm, author of two novels and the poetry collection Tangents.

“In her second full-length collection of poems, Newton proves that she is a poet on the move. And that move is forward. There is a great deal of history in this book—personal and otherwise—but it is all history in the service of now and next. …  Follow this poet. You’ll want to hear what she has to say now and what she’ll have to say next.”

—Diane Goettel, Executive Editor, Black Lawrence Press.

“This is a book of change and turbulence. A book of crisp language and enjambment. A book of voices, from mothers, lovers, Brecht, Vonnegut, Cage, a prison in Sri Lanka, a basement full of poppies, Is-ness and the past, which Newton calls “a slippery bed mat” and she asks: Does something that has had all its parts replaced remain the same thing? By the end, Unlocking is a book of patience, love and tenderness.”

—Madeleine Marie Slavick, author of Fifty Stories Fifty Images.

“Mary-Jane Newton is a talented poet, and this new collection will hopefully win her new readers. Her style is accessible, playful, and often unsettling—she is unafraid of black humour, the twist in the poem that can surprise a reader who might think these are just poems about motherhood and love. Look again—there is steel and fire here, in powerful, sometimes exotic, poems of war, lust, technology and danger. From her unusual vantage point as a writer of English poetry on the edge of China, Newton is offering a new perspective on 21st century living.”

—Todd Swift, Teacher in Creative Writing, University of Glasgow, Director and Editor of Eyewear Publishing and Author of “Selected Poems 1983–2013” (Marick Press, USA, forthcoming 2014).

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"The objectives of this book, The Year of the Apparitions, can be summed up in one word, survival. The survival game is hard for everyone. In my case, the stories that poetry and theatre can tell are life-vests fitting me amazingly well, painting was another one for a while. Stories not only help us to stay afloat, a good story is still the most powerful engine in the world, as it has been in the last few thousand years. My poems are short stories, open to interpretation, a little bit provocative, full of images. In this book I think I have managed to make my stories more solid. I believe that they are told in a way comprehensible to people from many backgrounds. We are all survivors."

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36 missives in poetry on truth and reality, anger and rage, complexity and change, and power as manifested in people, corporations, governments, borders and cultures. All in a strict and unique poetic form. By an Australian living in Hong Kong.

Love poems full of familiar details from everyday modern living, paradoxically pervaded with classical, philosophical and scientific allusions. They are expressed in simple words and images, and are, at different levels, accessible to all. Translation by Aleksandra Spaseska from Macedonian.

Dr Birgit Bunzel’s second collection of poetry./ “If we practice listening to our bewilderment inside, it ultimately leads to a more expansive understanding, a greater acceptance of the ‘givenness’ of life, and a clarity of heart. / This clarity of heart is the foundation of bliss.”/ —Birgit Bunzel

In H/ERO/T/IC BOOK, Macedonian writer, Marta Markoska writes about her passionate but tragically-ended story with her ex-husband, the devotion and loving support of one man, and her experiences with a few other men after her marriage ended, while she was struggling with the process of surviving breast cancer. She wrote these poems as she underwent a series of aesthetic surgeries and worked at the gym to develop her body to its best perfection. In these poems, she rediscovers herself in her altered body, proving to herself her renewed worth as a sexual and sensual woman./Those who have read her metaphysical poetry collection, Black Holes Within Us, will not be disappointed. She again calls the universe into play, as both the context for her love and as providing a means for its expression. Witty and explicit, but also devoted, romantic and tender, the poems give a voice to those women who lack either the language or the courage to express and share their own experiences and emotions. Maybe the poems also encourage greater insight and self-awareness in sisters worldwide.

Exploration of the city of Hong Kong, detailing experiences, examining pressures felt while growing up, and the translation of emotions felt during the tumultuous second half of 2019.

The debut poetry collection of prize-winning poet, Laura Solomon. It covers a wide range of topics:— the prophetess Pythia, England's Guy Fawkes, an alternative reality for New Zealand writer Janet Frame, earthquakes, in vitro experiments, spiders, tigers, vampire bats. The themes are universal. As Patricia Prime writes in Takahē, Laura Solomon is, "a tolerant, compassionate observer of nature and human nature. She is able to look into the lives, hearts and minds, not only of people, but of animals – using their thoughts and voices." Mainly written between 2003 and 2007 when the author was living in London, several of the poems have been placed in UK literary competitions and some have appeared in a number of international literary magazines, including Aesthetica, Broadsheet, Frost Writing, Sentinel, The Shop, Landfall, and the London Poetry Festival Anthology.

“Driven by curiosity as a poet but also by responsibility as the president of "The International Festival Curtea de Argeş Poetry Nights" in Romania (There have been twenty editions, attended in total by over fifteen hundred guests from about a hundred countries), I read and translate the lyrics of hundreds of poets.

            That's how I discovered the exceptional poet Gillian Bickley from Hong Kong.
            What firstly drew my attention was the savant level of her poetry; the science of balancing the rational with the sentiment.
            Each of her poems is sometimes a small novel, an essay or at other times a lyrical sublimate. Her poems are remembrances: from the past (an ancient past, a medieval past, and so on), from her own past or a possible reader's past.
            The way of shaping her poetry especially fascinates the professional reader. Because, of course, a professional poet (as Gillian Bickley is) will always need a professional reader.” – Dumitru M. Ion ( Romania), Member of the Arts and Sciences Academy in R. Macedonia, etc., 2016.

Perspectives in poetry on Hong Kong, hopefully relatable also to other urban environments. By a 2nd-generation Hong Konger of Indian descent, who is also bipolar.

Contains slices of perspectives in a great big place. But the writer contends that these perspectives are held by others as well, that others have felt them, that they resonate through Hong Kong and into other cities, and other disconnected, disjointed individuals on other trains on their way to other stations.

        The writer hopes that you will find something inside that you can relate to, that you can feel something about. He hopes by the end of it you will have had some kind of view into or out of a window, despite being on a train underground. A glimpse into the mind of a Hong Konger, one among seven million others.

   “We might agree on some things and disagree on others”, writes Vishal Nanda, “but by the end we would have traveled together, and that is enough to make acquaintances of us both, which is quite alright by me.”

SAVAGE CHARM is autobiographical at its core, yet unsentimental, unapologetic, and rigorous in its exploration of related concepts such as self-knowledge, fictional identity, the city, the writing of exile, belief, religion, and the modern subject. The poet brings his distinctive voice to cosmopolitan Hong Kong’s English poetic scene with this volume which records his personal experience of the city in the subtlest of ways. Though highly personal, the poems have a gutsy impersonal touch and a distinctive social tinge. Savage charm: a first poetry collection is beautifully poetic and deeply philosophical at the same time.

DEEPA VANJANI developed an interest in poetry early in life and her love for poetry has always remained strong. Born and brought up in India and firmly rooted in Indian traditions and spirituality, she has a PhD in English Literature. As well as her concern for the human condition, she is particularly involved in environmental issues. Vanjani has contributed as a freelance columnist to the esteemed national English-language dailies, Times of India and Hindustan Times and has written intermittently for Confluence, published from London. An academician by profession, Dr Vanjani presently heads the English department in a college in Indore, Central India, and runs a literary club with the aim of nurturing interest in creative writing. Shifting Sands is the first collection of her poetry, some of which has previously been published in literary magazines and online forums.

SMOKED PEARL chronicles observations and experiences in Hong Kong, Canada and Africa, and was long-listed for the inaugural Proverse Prize in 2009.

"Jeje sees the gleam revealed within the grime: his titular smoked pearl evocative of this interplay of light and dark. For tarnished things must once have been precious, and though Jeje writes of wasted days, he recognises the briefness, 'the glory of the blaze.' … But for all that Jeje sees — the injustice, the silence and the blame — these darknesses of the human soul are not total: the night ends, hope dawns."  —Viki Holmes, author of miss moon's class.