Reviews of The Angels's Share

Slow, slow, slow!

A year later--okay over a year later--I have discovered some reviews of The Angels' Share online. I am quite excited by this, as these are some more than the first collection got: showing that it takes a terribly long time to get going in poetry-- as well as showing that I must be terribly idle to even be looking!

First, I found one in Australia: Tintean, a journal for the Australian Irish Heritage Network. They used to be a hard-copy journal but have gone over to an online version. The reviewer is quite kind, overall, but isn't keen on Pair Bond-- one of the poems that goes down a storm at readings--nor some of the Mallory poems--where I would have 'recycled' some of Mallory's quotes from his letters and journals, which I suppose might have made the poems seem stilted, as the language of the early 20th C is more formal than our 21st C brogues. Can't win 'em all, I guess.

Then there's a very warm one from Dublin Duchess --on an aside, her reading list is quite exhaustive and worth checking out. She loves Pair Bond, but thems the breaks, as they say.

 Mike Begnal's review on Todd Swift's Eyewear blog is very generous, I got the impression he really liked the book and his favourite towards the end, Modern Fantasia is one of my favourites too. 

And lastly there's one on Magma poetry's blog but alas, I don't know what it says yet, as there seems to a problem with the website--maybe it's just me!

By the way, if you're wondering what Pair Bond is all about, click on the link for a very short video of me and some Poetry Divas giving it what for (thanks to you-know-who for putting it together for me).