'This is a fantastic collection, published by the wonderful Welsh press Parthian Books. The poems are lyric poems that stand on their own, but they also tell a wider, fragmented narrative of a girlhood spent on a farm, amongst horses. It’s a book that revels in the physicality of writing about work, and perhaps unusually - women’s work on farms, and it’s also a story of daughters and mothers and the difficulties and love that exists between them.'
[...]
'I have so many favourite poems in here, and was heartened to see that a poem from the collection has been included in the 2025 Forward Prize anthology. Another favourite of mine is “Unearthing” - an amazing poem which recounts a teenage sexual encounter and finishes ‘it is only now I realise my body / was not the fuel in this story but the canary / the snuffed silence…’
I highly recommend subscribing but I believe this one is a public post, that you can access here:
And we've had another positive review in on The High Window. Here's a short extract:
'Christina Thatcher’s poetry has a directness and a clarity that I find admirable: she tells it straight, although on occasion a little cryptic, stretching our deductive faculties.
'The opening two poems seem to work in tandem. In Welcome to the Barn, any uncertainties as to why the pretty girls are braiding their hair or whether it refers to girls or horses, or why the clasps are solid silver, are clarified in the second poem, The Show, which is clearly about a performance spectacle or rodeo event where appearances are paramount as indicated by the last couplet:
'For now, this just has to look pretty.
For now, this just has to be perfect.'
John Short, The High Window https://thehighwindowpress.com/2025/10/03/the-high-window-reviews-date/
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