I just wanted to let you know I read your chapbook today, from cover to cover. Thank you so much for sending it! I thought many of the poems were amazing. Particularly "Judas..." This poem really moved me, even though prior to reading it I'm not sure I knew the story about how Judas died, being as they say, a VERY lapsed Catholic... so lapsed, in fact, it'd be more accurate to call me something else, like agnostic... On profiles such as this one I tend to simply choose "Other" - if only they had the option they often put for sexual orientation, under religion: "It's complicated." Anyway, despite all that (ah yes now we're getting to the point, here we go), I thought "Judas" was amazing. The imagery of the hanging tree was so vivid I knew how he must have died, without consciously remembering it, or perhaps the poem MADE me remember it, and then when I got to the last stanza, which is so complicated and ripe with all kinds of implication and subtext ("I never told him / I loved him, words spoken blue, / though I like to think he knew"), but yet so simple on the surface and pure and human... Really that poem is amazing. I think I might share it with my students. I also very much enjoyed "Making Butter" - having a late mother, who I remember perhaps most vividly when I'm baking with her recipes - and "Wasps" - having recently purchased a 100+ year old house. Of course there is more going on in "Wasps" than the literal story of the homeowners and the insects, but I've been mulling over the conflict between man and nature in the context of the home, myself, for my new novel, so I really enjoyed the observations you made about that, especially the lines, "For when the irregular crackle and hiss / ... slips into our senses / it could so easily be... the steady shifting of a house dying as it stands / which numbs our every thought / until we come to accept the thing we fear most." Very, very nice. (Mary McMyne, Reader, Myspace)

“In this collection, the poet reveals a striking awareness of the power of poetry to enact a ‘strange sea-change’ on the ‘heated substance’ of the reader. The majority of poems are celebrations of the life of the imagination and the senses, skilfully crafted, timely reminders of an aspect of life all too often neglected. A veritable “Ice Dancer” herself, Anne Brooke communicates ‘the danger, the explosion/of words/into ice’. She explores the inner world of personal relationships with an acute awareness of its complexity and is able to share these insights in poems, which are richly sensuous. Nor does she neglect the mundane: “Calling” describes a fridge door crammed with telephone numbers and messages; although she finds the ‘net of community’ ‘unforgiving’ and ‘beyond our calling.’ “Things I fold away” lists not only the obvious ‘briefs, bras, (into nests) … socks, jumpers …’ but also ‘my history, silences … your disapproval … resentment, irritations …’ And ultimately, ‘life’. The last poem in the collection, “The cat’s response to yellow”, captures the elusive nature of inspiration and its transformation into art, leaving the reader pondering the experience of ‘the echo of yellow air’”. (A review by Anna Avebury of Vers Poets Society)

“The smart – in the best sense – title paves the way for the variety of voice and subject matter to come. There is throughout a refreshing lack of inhibition in the use of language, yet not a single piece is overwritten. A fine collection.”
(Keith Please, poet)