Today's poem FACE THE STRAIN by Joolz Sparkes published by AGAINST THE GRAIN POETRY PRESS (ISBN: 978-1-73-916840-7) £6.00 This pamphlet FACE THE STRAIN is written by the Londoner poet Joolz Sparkes, born and raised in the UK. As in the poetry book London Undercurrents (written with Hilaire), the verse stage in the pamphlet is set in London with love and hate. The title serves as a metaphor for Sparkes’s daily life there as a working woman. I, as a freelance translator, can strongly sympathize with her works and feel keenly what she is fighting in society. The collection covers various forms, i.e., formal poem (‘We’re trying to stop, honest’ with rich cacophony) to concrete poem (‘No title’ with irony). Through it, the current social issues such as diversity and gender are expressed with her own lyricism. From that perspective, it includes works that could be described as political, reiterated as in the previous book. What is most impressive for me is ‘O World, who shall we be