Rope of Sand by Fiona Larkin Simon Smith Plathian interrogative voice Fletcher's poems

Plathian interrogative voice Fletcher's poems prowl the bars and night-haunts of Madrid and London

Speaking-or rather

Andrew Forster: ‘The poems in Penny Boxall’s rich and substantial debut are made of hidden fragments of history

I say that to my girlfriend Life

in all its bleached and sticky-carpeted illusions and almost-glory

Rope of Sand by Fiona Larkin Simon Smith Plathian interrogative voice Fletcher's poemsIn a compelling, nuanced debut, Fiona Larkin scrutinises instability and asks what we hold onto, and what we let go. Her poems, delicate and tough, consider the shifting relationships in couples, between parent and child, how a friendship is formed and broken. She searches for those languages and registers we remember, and how we might lose them, and the place of the spiritual when faith, like the tide, recedes. Sand is always equivocal, unreliable,