This is poetry from within an international concrete-typographic tradition to which it pays respect as a means of placing itself precisely in its own distinct take on language. Gide said most good writers have their own specific sense of irony, and that’s one of the things nick-e melville shows in the work here. But by irony is not meant that commonplace smart-arsedness of British literary middleclass detachment and defence; on the contrary this is a way of viewing and engaging that is basic, delicate, and political. — Tom Leonard
