The best poetry books of 2021 so far
The most interesting recent poetry collections travel the world, from Welsh churches to refugee camps in Lebanon, via a Romanian orphanage
Maria Stadnicka s latest collection is Buried Gods Metal Prophets
Credit: Maria Stadnicka/Guillemot Press
Buried Gods Metal Prophets by Maria Stadnicka ★★★★☆
Welcome to “the Sputnik Wing for irrecoverables”, St Joseph’s Orphanage, Romania, where the state is doing all it can to cover up the true nature of the “irrecoverable” children’s condition.
Between 1987-1991, at least 10,000 in Romania’s overcrowded orphanages were infected with HIV, believed to be caused by dirty needles used in vaccinations. In the poems of Buried Gods Metal Prophets, we witness this tragedy mainly through the eyes of two young children known only as “Bed 27” and “Bed 28”.
offers views inside and out of the bird that inspired ‘Cock Pheasant’, his wonderful poem just published in the winter issue of
The Poetry Review. Both belligerent and fugitive, the bird is impelled to confront and is also deeply perturbed by the ghost self he spies in the kitchen window – offering instructive anthropomorphic reflections on our own susceptible sense of self. “Wild creatures have irreducible quiddity. So do we – a species whose needs, beliefs and anxieties generate the world,” Mort writes.
To read both the article and poem, visit the
The Poetry Review web section, where you’ll discover more about the inner workings of many
The Best Australian Poems and
Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry. She is currently finalising her first poetry collection.
Rushika Wick is a poet and doctor with an interest in intersections between sociology and impacts on the body. In particular, how these affect women and children. She is also developing a practice of visual poetry and making object-poems. She has work in various anthologies and magazines including Ambit, Datableed and forthcoming in Magma and SAND (Berlin). She has performed in London and Amsterdam as part of the Cold Lips collective and Rough Night Press, and has been on residency in Norwich as part of the Skylark Community. She is a current student at the Poetry School and has a debut collection launching in April 2021 with Verve.