In this follow-up to her acclaimed debut The Met Office Advises Caution, Rebecca Watts observes and tests the limits of humanity's engagement with the non-human. By turns lyrical and narrative, the poems examine familiar subjects - environmental crisis, hawks, hospitals, the sea, barbecues, flowers, Emily Dickinson - only to find their subjects staring, sometimes fighting, back. Nature and nurture, equally red in tooth and claw, power a book-long sparring match between the overthinking poet and the ever-thoughtless universe, between the craft's isolation and the world's irrepressible variety. Gloves on and gloves off, the poet's hands destroy and build, gather and scatter, caress and strike.
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Everything comes down to numbers in the end. ECONOMICS
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(@Carcanet, 25 June 2020, ebook, 64 pages, borrowed from @natpoetrylib via @OverDriveLibs)
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I'm new to this poet. I really enjoyed Red Gloves. I will likely check out her other collection The Met Office Advises Caution because with that title, who wouldn't? The poems in this collection use a lot of imagery to compare natural and man-made things, spaces and objects. I've not really come across this before and enjoyed the poems very much. I like the fact the poems are all quite different and the style and length varies from piece to piece. Very enjoyable.
