David Dick

Grief, depression, and trauma do terrible things to the human body and spirit. The brain rebels callously against its vessel, leaving the wounded mind to wallow in the deepest pits of despair, perpetually refreshing pain and obsessively seeking out the recesses of scarred memories. The speaker in Robbie Coburn’s Ghost Poetry (2024) is similarly broken. There seems to be a separation in the book ... (read more)

It is time to repent my sins. Recently, I have been asking myself if poetry is exempt from a need to entertain. Is the act of reading a poem or a book of poetry an escapist, amusing, joyous diversion from the rigours of reality? Or is it something more tedious, cold-blooded, blandly intellectual – an act not of enjoyment, but of control and imposition? If you scan enough poetry criticism, it wo ... (read more)

Both Adam Aitken’s Archipelago and Elizabeth Allen’s Present examine the establishment and mutability of identity in the worlds of objects, histories, literature, and media in which they place their speakers. Of course, the exploration of identity is a common theme of poetry, particularly as it pertains to how the material of language helps shape such a tenuous concept. Admittedly, the theme s ... (read more)