Reviews

A few excerpts from recent reviews

Ian McMillan on The Verb, Radio 3

I liked the unforced modernity [of 'Los Alamos Mon Amour'], the way it seemed as natural as breathing, to take a subject and illuminate the readers’ and writers’ thoughts about it.

Laurie Smith in Magma 41

To turn to Simon Barraclough's 'Los Alamos Mon Amour' is to re-enter the world in which I and most people live ─ urban, filmic, provisional, political. The title poem with its echo of Resnais' film establishes his style like a thunderclap, describing the world's first atomic explosion with details both horrific and credible ...

Many of the early poems respond to the experience of cinema, including A Tall Story about a Pushover which consists of lines from posters advertising B-movies ... There are powerful descriptions of depression (Seroxat and Celestial Navigation); a snuff poem about trapping a childhood friend in a disused fridge (Frigidaire); and accounts of particularly modern experiences such as waiting outside a changing cubicle while the woman tries on clothes to wear for another man ...

Some of the poems are directly about London, such as London Whale featuring the whale that died in the Thames last year, ending "Look how sentimental you make me: / we're a city of visitors, you see." (Barraclough is from Yorkshire) ...

Barraclough may see himself as travelling lightly through the world, but he catches the sense of what it's like to live in the modern city more astutely and more often than most other poets. Salt is to be congratulated on investing in his first collection in hardback.

John Greening in the Times Literary Supplement

Any poet from Huddersfield must be within earshot of Simon Armitage and there are familiar elements (not least a torrential energy) in Simon Barraclough’s first collection ...

London Whale shows how it should be done, with fluidity, delicacy, and tonal variety ... There are several shorter (often sonnet-length) poems which balance everything successfully ... and ingenious miniatures.

This is very good writing ... a beautifully produced highly readable collection.

Chris Horton in The London Magazine

['Los Alamos Mon Amour'] simultaneously assaults and seduces the senses with an understated charm ...

If it is Barraclough's broad palette of subject matter that draws the reader in, it is his attention to the craft of poetry that will endure.

Like Simon Armitage, Barraclough grew up in Huddersfield and although in many ways he is a very different writer, there is something about this collection that brings to mind that first rush of excitement brought on by Armitage's early work.