Cinnamon Press strana 2 z 3

Liliana Pasterska is the maven of finding emotional depth in the detail of the everyday. In Brontë Journey we are invited to walk alongside a love story, one that is sundered by loss, yet shines all the more brightly for that. The language is clear and precise. The places resonate with the beauty and grief that unfold in the personal story of Charlotte Brontë and Arthur Bell Nichols at the heart of the collection. The voices of her subjects carry across time, not an act of ventriloquism, but of empathy and immersion. And if for Arthur, grieving as he leaves Yorkshire six years after Charlotte’s early and sudden death, “Roadside fuchsia will greet him / as if nothing had passed.”, the clue is in the ‘as if’. For so much has passed and this exquisite collection has allowed us in, invited us to share a moment with creatures whose lives still touch us. An elegant, heart-stopping collection.

In this exquisite pamphlet, grief is on every page, yet there is not a maudlin word. The language is clear and vivid, the memories accessible and, despite the emotional weight of loss explored, there is light and joy here. A collection as freighted with gratitude as sorrow. G W Colkitto is a maven of control of form and line, with the ability to say only what is needed and no more, and in If you want to know her, such craft opens spaces that allow the reader to immerse in the poems, feel deeply and leave with grace. An outstanding collection — poignant and true.

A line of pain runs through generations of families… until one generation stops to question the ancestral forces behind the door. In Life & Fable Guislaine Vincent explores archetypal patterns in the ancestral background of her family's storytelling, peeling away the layers to discover a self in myth and fable. As the narrative unfolds, it’s the implacable presence of childhood that recurs, not only in events, but in how events reveal the self. Mektoub, my father would say: it is written. From a great grandfather found in the deserts of Syria and named after the monastery that takes him in to the pain of losing a child; from a childhood of 14 schools across multiple countries to training as a Jungian Psychoanalyst, this is a life story that asks deep questions about who we are and how we peel back reality to find the truth in fables. A story of resilience and the epiphany of how powerful it is to have a name.

12-year-old Livia flees her forced marriage in Genoa for glamorous Florence and an affair with Don Giovanni de’ Medici, son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. To protect Livia from the Medicis’ hostility, they move to Venice. They succeed in having Livia’s first marriage annulled, get married and have a son. But the Medicis will stop at nothing. Constructed through fragments and intense, eloquent letters that only recently surfaced. Love in the time of the Medici inhabits the spaces between what is recorded and what is imagined. A story with the magnitude and tragedy of that of Abelard and Héloise.

A whole universe (contained inside a Beardmore taxi) parks itself in Elizabethan London. Inside, a troupe of actors begin to stage plays written by a certain Master (who bears an uncanny resemblance to William Shakespeare). Pretty soon, there are queues outside the newly-built Globe theatre. Queen Elizabeth is a fan. . . the other theatre companies in town aren''t. Tensions build, fights break out and the future of the new theatre is under threat from several directions. Meanwhile, Lorenzo (who might be the creator of the universe inside the Beardmore taxi) is distracted. You see, he’s fallen in love.Part literary alternative history, part absurdist burlesque, part subtle deconstruction of time, place and authorship, Maybe Shakespeare, Maybe Harlequin is a universe-bending carnivalesque, a layered and mesmerising fabulation, a book like no other.

Mick Evans is a writer who takes risks. Never content to remain static, the voice is increasingly explorative, increasingly nuanced and possessed of a compassion that is also clear-sighted. The feel for language, the lyrical pulse, the acuteness of observation and the range and depth of references are signature features of Mick Evans'' work. But with each new collection the reach is extended. There are poems here that unsettle or warn, that celebrate or remember, that surprise and delight, poems that make us laugh or wonder… and always there is love — not sentiment, not nostalgia, but permeable, authentic, love in all its shades of grief and joy.

The truth can be liberating. But at what price?When Sarah Lester discovers the birth certificate of a twin sister her world unravels. Why had her parents never spoken of Suzette? And why are they still lying to her?As Sarah’s world becomes increasingly threatening, her determination to trace Suzette increases. Supported by her partner, Ben, and her friend, Jennifer, Sarah’s search leads her from the Scottish Highlands to southwest France, via dead ends, hostile encounters with a strange couple and a disturbing childhood memory.What confrontations lie ahead?How do we rebuild a life when it’s devastated by reality?

Eyes are key Masca (Latin): spectre Maschera (Italian): mask Maskharah (Arabic): foolFelicity Hepburn is back in London. In the game for one more hit. To make enough to get married, live the family life. A beautiful woman with flawless style. A brain in service of the gun. With acid wit and fierce mascara she rips up the city, seducing men and spreading bullets as danger tightens around her. London is her playground. Her target the kingpins, spies and dealers with the world in their back pocket.Loud, bright and brash, this transgressive thriller lays its elegant fist into the big questions. Must society be corrupt to face corruption? Can appearance and identity become one? How does a woman function in the business of death, yet still be a source of life?High shine and deadly serious, Felicity Hepburn is in town.

what we must remember, what we would forget…How do we carry the past when memory begins to splinter, when daily words and faces elude us while the distant past haunts and torments? How do we carry the past as the adult children of ageing parents whose vitality has given way to a dependency the parent cannot accept? And where are the safe places for our elders in a society with no patience for the slow and the old, a society that sees them as products for an industry of ‘care’ that exists first for its share-holders?These questions weave through l’Aubier as Isabelle Llasera explores the final stages of her mother’s life in a residential home in the South of France and as her mother’s dementia escalates in an environment where profit ranks above care. Written with grace, tenderness and extraordinary clarity, the narrative is addressed to ‘you’. And so we are immersed in a story that brims with frustration (the clothes that disappear, the cold air conditioning in November, the persistent odour of urine in the lounge…) alongside small acts of rebellion that we revel in (the unauthorised car trip in the rain and snow with the best rainy coffee ever). And through it all, the fragments of a long and accomplished life dissolving into moments that won’t let go — the horror of whether three Jewish children ever reached safety or the teenage joy of the fur coat her father gave her…Deeply personal and searingly political, without a whiff of didacticism, l’Aubier will make you laugh and cry. But most of all it will leave you with questions. Dignity? Memory? Identity? Responsibility? So many questions society needs to face if we are to retain humanity.

Tonally beautiful with a quality that bridges exterior and interior worlds, Light Still, Light Turning is full of exquisite phrases and lucid images. Shifting with ease from lyrical narrative poems to contemplative pieces that never become abstract, Yvonne Baker writes with a light touch, that belies the skill and control at work in every poem. There is not a false note here. Form and content support one another and we are immersed in a world that aches and delights and carries us on its rhythms of loss and love and its bittersweet acknowledgment of change. This is a finely-honed collection, at once elegant and searching.

There is a density of imagery in Cusp that speaks to an exuberance of spirit and a lively mind. The poems sing off the page, create worlds and make leaps of imagination. We find ourselves unsure of what world we are in, yet always in safe hands. An original collection, full of perspectives that give us pause.We are asked to engage, to think, to upend expectations, to delve as deeply into our unconscious. We are asked to care. In this liminal space on the Cusp, it’s a challenge we should rise to.

Imagine a story that oozes sensuality, immerses you in sound, taste, touch and sight, that delves into sexuality. A story that’s an incisive and urgent challenge to ablism and racism, that explores spirituality and embodiment. A story that expands your empathy, thinking, your heart. Meet Mira. Hispanic-American, married to Andre and in polyamorous relationships with Paloma and Araceli, living with Cystic Fibrosis against the backdrop of an impoverished childhood with an unstable, drug-dependent mother who goes on throwing challenges. She’s here to live life in all it’s glorious, messy, joyous, sensual, heart-breaking fullness. Mira’s Story — a story for us all.

the heart is an organ of perception, one of the body’s brains as well as an image of romantic love, joy and despair. Setting out to explore ‘the flesh and blood of the organ’ in this journey of a transplant, Jacqueline Haskell excavates the metaphor with extraordinary intelligence and skill.Moving from science to the heart as an organ of memory, passion and so much more, the poetry in this collection is inventive and perspective-shifting, layering fact and emotion, folklore and ritual, mortality and life. Fascinating and deeply moving, Takotsubo is a compelling collection made all the ore so by its precision and suppleness of language.

Beautifully observed and written with a lightness and freshness that breathes life through every poem, Sparrows at the Breakfast Table invites us into a place of wonder and love. These family moments, most acute between a grandfather and grandson, are filled with gentle humour and deep tenderness. And there is nothing shallow here — these poems are not whimsies but serious reflections on the bonds we make across generations and how they go on reverberating in memory.In these exquisitely illustrated encounters, we find ourselves more able to savour what matters, to value the heart and soul of life. This is an enchanting collection that not only shines a light on our relationship to children but also invites us to connect again the child within each of us.

Grief runs through these poems, most beginning with an epigraph from a diary entry by Emily Brontë, whose first loss was her mother when she was just three years old.We are in an interior world in this sequence, thoughts and feelings pouring through these elegant poems, but always anchored in the body, in the physical. It’s in the daily round of kneading the bread that anger is transferred from body to dough till both are transformed; it’s in the ‘intricate feathery leaflets/sweet chrysanthemum-like scent’ of yarrow that refuge is experienced; it’s in the imagination of an ‘island’s sun’ that dark thoughts (‘a crepe-winged crow’) find respite.The poems move between the quiet daily life of a woman who loses those she loves over and over again and Emily Brontë as an extraordinary writer. And in that movement, emotions so earth-shattering, so veined with yearning, so unspeakable in their grief that they challenge death itself, find their form. Liliana Pasterska brings to life a soaring spirit in lucid images that leave us in awe.

Sue Lewis has won previous pamphlet awards and one of the many things that delights about her work is that each new collection pushes the boundaries of language and integrity further. The writing is lucid, precise, the metaphors are precise and fresh, but the effect is to take us within—to interior landscapes where there is not certainty but the constant liminality of life in process, the questions and doubts we contend with, the moments of compassion alongside the bittersweet ache for the lives that might have been, while tending to the life that is. There is not a false word in this exquisite collection as it makes its ‘risky/tender pilgrimage.’