It’s chilly, wet mid-January. Unusually, I haven’t been outside today, except to get a signal for my mobile so I can have a quick chat with my daughter.
‘But cold provides us with delightful opportunities to luxuriate in that feeling Scandinavians call hygge,’ writes Annie Fisher in her Sphinx review of my collection, ‘January’. Annie continues:’ In ‘Ice Hotel’ we find a place:
where everything is carved from ice
but even so is welcoming and cosy.
[…]
You can sleigh right up to the door;
they serve hot meals, mulled wine
So settle down by the fire and enjoy this lovely collection. Hot chocolate anyone? Brandy? Spicy punch?’
Thank you, Annie! Good advice.
Annie’s own pamphlet, ‘The Deal’ published by Happenstance in 2020 is one of my favourite recent poetry collections. I love the humour, the light touch, and the vivid stories and characters. Today, I’m choosing to read, ‘The Orange Lobster and the Hens’, in which Donald Trump, portrayed as a lobster suddenly freed from the poet’s book, is set upon and demolished by a kitten-heel-wearing hen party! What a solution.
Sarah Barr 