MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
AFTER all those appalling, fawning poems about the monarchy (leaving some writers who should have known better looking rather foolish), it is a relief to come across Fran Lock’s Sid James at the Poetry Society:
“Cor blimey! If you’re wearing those clothes for a bet, you’ve won…Your poetry is / for rent collectors rubbing their hands at your / sorry arrears … If you’re writing that shit for a bet, / you’ve won.”
Fran Lock’s new collection Hyena! (Poetry Bus Press, Ireland, €15) is her biggest and best collection yet, a series of vivid monologues and harangues by marginal voices, loners, outsiders and outcasts, surreal and subversive.
ALAN MORRISON welcomes a new collection from the most imaginative and committed ecopoet of our time
Two inspring books — that’s your New Year’s musing from me on January 2 2026
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin


