Namanlagh by Tom Paulin (Faber, £12.99)
It has been more than a decade – “long empty days / with the blank page” – since Paulin’s Love’s Bonfire. His 10th collection is informed by depression and the recovery from it: “if only some idea / could find its way / through enemy territory / then I’d at last begin / to look up at the sky”. His lyrics still meander down the page, but linguistic fireworks have been replaced by language that is straightforward, unadorned and more affecting for it. This also gives his reflections on the recent shifts in Northern Irish history and politics more bite. But it’s in its more private moments that the book really shines: “Heed my cadences then and live only for now. / Don’t ever bother about tomorrow. / Just pluck, today, life’s full-blooded roses”.
Foretokens by Sarah Howe (Chatto & Windus, £12.99)
Ten years since winning the TS Eliot prize with her debut Loop of Jade, Howe’s second collection is a reaffirmation of the keen, probing intelligence and ability to layer telling detail that underpins her poetry. Taking on the biggest of subjects – genetics, time’s relativity, becoming a parent – as well as re-examining her mother’s occluded history in Hong Kong, there is now an anger in Howe’s tonal range, which brings a pleasing sharpness to her investigations: “child of a hoarder / I am not immune / to this mania this malaise / this inherited dream / of an archive / so complete nothing / could ever hurt again”. Foretokens is a quite brilliant return.
