Strange Land

Tim Kendall

Editions

Review

Tim Kendall, the founding editor of the now defunct journal 'Thumbscrew', has waited a long time for this, his first poetry collection, and there is enough quality here fully to vindicate his patience.  Formal practice is suitably varied - prose poems mingle with ironically Augustan couplets – and Kendall’s style achieves an intriguing balance between the modern and the medieval: “They tell me pastorals are out this season” (p.29).  Although there are one or two weaker poems they are all but fully eclipsed by triumphs such as the perfectly judged “Astronauts” and the silly but thoroughly entertaining “Ship of Fools”.  One image in particular is so magnificently wince-inducing that it begs to be quoted:

“I remembered the hedgehog

we found last month

unzipped in the long grass.”

Ouch!  All in all, a very good first collection. - review by Paul Engles