Harm

The poems in this, Alan Jenkin’s third collection, speak of the harm done and suffered – most frequently in the name of love – in the course of lives gone adrift among lost causes, chance meetings and missed chances. A new directness and simplicity, and throughout, a raw urgency of personal feeling, inform a voice that is as resourceful as in Jenkin’s earlier volumes, and continues to salvage a ‘fugitive lyricism’ (as one reviewer put it) from harsh and dissonant realities. ‘By turns jocular, disquieting, sexy and inventive’-PETER READING, SUNDAY TIMES ‘Jenkins’ poetry is exhilarating. . . It is charged with erotic energy, rage, sorrow and confusion’-TLS ‘Stylish, Savage, unforgiving’-HUGO WILLIAMS, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH ‘Jenkins has a restless mind: following his poetry gives his readers a rocky ride, but also a rewarding one. ‘-PETER PORTER, OBSERVER.