New Titles from Cinnamon Press

A number of new titles from Cinnamon Press have arrived on the doorstep in recent months.

WINTER LINES by Daniel Healy (ISBN 978 1 905614 57 8) is a collection of rather minimalist poems. A typical example is

Impression

frost cold
breathing mist
parkland crow
with a broken neck

a vague unease
black, red & white.

DINNER TIME by Holly Howitt (ISBN 978 1 905614 53 0) consists of prose-poems or microfictions. There is quite a lot of quite subtle humour in many of these pieces. One is an account of someone who calls their girlfriends by the names of stores, Lidl, Woolworths, Sainsbury's.

YOIK by Bob Beagrie (ISBN 978 1 905614 40 0) is a much more meatier offering. Yoik we are told

is an original form of Sami music and an integral part of the ancient religion of Shamanism.

and whilst there are sometimes obscure references scattered throughout, the poems in general are accessible like STORM DAMAGE which paints a scene of flash-floods in Newcastle. There is a series of poems about Staithes:

Old Nab squats, a snub at waves and sky
hoarding its rumoured seam of jet
and watching like it always has
for Viking longships
Spanish galleons running before a storm
German battleships in the fog
and the diminishing fleet of Steers cobles
coming and going on the edge of extinction.

ALPHABETS OF ELSEWHERE by Time Keane (ISBN 978 1 905614 38 7) is different again in style with much variety of form from prose poems to the chopped lines of LINES FOR AN IRISH DANCER

for fleet
sweeping feet
spinning reels
fiddles for the air
word crazy epistles
of could-be's
& yesterdays,
...

THE FOSSIL BOX by Richard Marggraf Turley (ISBN 978 1 905614 35 6) is a collection mainly focused on specific places, Blakeney, the Forest of Dean and elsewhere. There is even a series of poems on giants, Welsh, Irish, Norwegian and South American.

JASON SMITH'S NOCTURNAL OPERA by Nick Malone (ISBN 978 1 905614 26 4) is a book of eight chapters; narrative verse interspersed with short prose sections. It is a surreal metaphysical dream. Almost all the verse has centered lineation which I personally found a bit off-putting.

Other collections include BENEATH THE DELUGE by Catherine M Brennan (ISBN 978 1 905614 54 7), SIMPLE ARITHMETIC by Lloyd Rees (ISBN 978 1 905614 45 4), WAITING FOR A WARM BODY TO FILL IT by Kelly Moffett (ISBN 978 1 905614 44 8) and HAULED HEAD FIRST INTO A LEVIATHAN by Iain Britton (ISBN 978 1 905614 42 4). The books retail for £7.99 each.