Matthew Francis, The Mabinogi, 112 pp, £14.99, Faber & Faber Ltd

A woman who rides slowly but can’t be caught by the fastest galloping horseman; a cauldron that simmers dead warriors to life; a giant king who wades through the sea to make war on Ireland, and whose severed head is buried alive to watch over Britain when his body is killed by a poisonous wound; all the buildings, people and animals of a country stolen in a magic fog; the threat to hang a mouse who’s really the pregnant wife of a powerful magician on a gallows made of two … Continue Reading

Philip Gross, A Bright Acoustic, 96 pp, £9.95, Bloodaxe Books

Philip Gross is much admired for the intellectually exploratory side of his writing. Not having a philosophical or scientific mind, I have difficulty with longish works held together by ideas of an essentially abstract and cerebral kind, as is the case with the sequence “The Same River”. What I love about this poet is the way his imaginative power, skill in sensuous description and darting intelligence work in more localised and concrete contexts.

“Wren Time” shows the power with which Gross thinks in metaphors and the speed with which he moves between … Continue Reading

You can read my review for the Manchester Review by following this link:

Robert Desnos, Surrealist, Lover, Resistant, reviewed by Edmund Prestwich