Buzz Review: 'A very affecting collection of poems indeed.'

The first review of Windfalls is in, thanks Mab Jones and Buzz Magazine! Rather pleased to have been compared to Jean Rhys.

'The word used for its title makes this collection instantly intriguing. It can mean both fruit blown down in the wind, or a large amount of money received unexpectedly. However, the reader isn’t given a sense, here, of such lottery-like good luck. Where windfalls are specifically mentioned, they belong to other people – to those who don’t realise their abundant good fortune.

'In one poem they are “next door’s apples”; in a later poem, those same apples “are still there – / the windfalls, rotting / in garden waste bags”. Other people have their inherited trees full of fruit but, not being gifted such, Wild’s windfalls are of the everyday – of its physical intimacies, its domestic pleasures, and of simply being alive despite life’s many challenges and setbacks.

'With its series of poems about boyfriends and lovers past, against a backdrop of bars and “nightclub shadows”, Wild comes across as the poetic equivalent of Jean Rhys: wry, arch, a little world-weary but, unlike Rhys, with a sparkling glint of humour. In the book’s second half, then, Wild is married, and the poems become more about love and life as a couple. However, there are no easy conclusions here – life isn’t suddenly all sweetness and roses. Those rotting apples remain, although they no longer pose a threat – “each apple / a small bomb” – and Wild comes to a kind of acceptance – “We learn to stay still”. A very affecting collection of poems indeed.'