STRAY by Amanda Dalton

(published by BLOODAXE BOOKS, ISBN9781852248925)

     Basically, I want to write every book review in vignette style.

     I am very grateful to Amanda Dalton for encouraging my writing in her workshops: the 2010 ARVON and the 2015 Poetry Carousel. She is a brilliant British poet, playwright, and tutor. 

     As the title of the book indicates, to be lost or no home in reality, dream, and recollection is, I presume, the main theme. The portrayed images are a bit tragic with distortions of usual things. Readers can experience any scary scene in any poem. The collapse of daily matters therein rouses what the readers generally forget or do not see, like ghosts or hallucinations. My favorite is ‘Bird on a Wire’ that sings sorrow of a straying bird or swallow which was left from a flock of swallows heading for Africa. Also readers might fathom out that the life of the bird is a mystery – perhaps, unhappy fate and felt the sadness of a friend or partner who kept watching the bird.

     I want to hear her reading again in Manchester.