Poetry review – LOBE
Sarah Leavesley admires both the variety and the connectedness on show in Cia Mangat’s chapbook
lobe
Cia Mangat
Smith|Doorstep Books
978-1-914914-97-3
24 pages £6
Every time I try to sum up lobe, the contents resist. This may be a short chapbook but no description will contain it entirely – Cia Mangat’s poems expand in so many directions, yet without breaking any of the different connections I can follow through them.
I’ll start with the opening poem, “behind”, when I say that it’s about what’s gone before:
[…] don’t they say
that you exist inside your mother and her mother and her mother
so I’ve been there tinily inside hundreds of tentative wedding night kisses
before me […]
What’s gone before includes family, but also celebrities, Diana Princess of Wales in particular. As this and the quote above might suggest, these are poems about womanhood. Also, sexuality and how women look, including clothes and different parts of the body. In all of this, we have the contrast between the surface and what lies, or might lie, behind it. Nothing here comes without a sense of expectations.
The title poem, “Lobe”, is about ear-piercings but so much more as well, progressing from ‘1. ‘This won’t hurt for long,’ […]’ to asking for hair to be cut by clippers instead, then: ‘12. Matching like a pair of earrings (like couplets)’. The further 8 lines that follow include ‘14. Two or three pairs of hoops in to hold you down at night’ and the narrator tugging her earlobes in apology.
Many expectations come from others, including genderisations. But that doesn’t stop them being internalised, as explored in “sometimes I wonder if my ma is right & I do actually fancy boys”. The narrator in “george michael’s still a superstar and you still listen to wham” buys a poster of him for her mother because she is ‘the perfect daughter’. Likewise, perhaps, it’s why she dreams of marrying a man. This poem itself reads like a dream though. Such a gift might be given and received with love but that doesn’t make for easy relationships between what family/ society hope for and the everyday reality that is individual/ personal.
Similarities and differences are picked up on in various ways across these poems. In terms of my engagement and enjoyment as a reader, my personal experiences/ background/ life are sometimes similar and other times very different. But in both cases, the poems are striking and easy to either identify or empathise with. I may not have faced the same situations but what woman/ reader/ person has ever totally fitted what others seem to expect from them?
There are many interesting motifs that recur across lobe. Some I’ve touched upon already. Hair/ haircuts/ the barber and secrets are two others that are particularly significant. Their importance is part of the what lies behind appearances element but the latter also points to another aspect of the poems’ appeal: the sense of letting us in on secrets and being part of intimacies. This is also brought about by the use of the second person in many poems. If not completely within each experience, we are very close to it and it matters.
my head in your lap your hands
in my hair learning to swim
(“oil poem”)
I’ve not yet touched on form. As the quotes above may suggest, many (though not all!) of the poems use space and line breaks without/ in place of punctuation and normal sentence presentation. This shouldn’t be mistaken for lack of variety though. Form here ranges through long lines, numbered lines, narrow lines, what reads like a daring sonnet (“Don’t Do It Di”), indented lines and poems spread sideways across two pages. As with the contents, a lot of ground is covered in only 16 poems, with white-spacing as one thread running through them.
While it’s possible to read too much into what is and isn’t embodying about such choices, what strikes me most as a reader is the sense of being confined by the lines/ expectations in places, with the white spaces offering the possibility of, or the need for, escape.
Mangat’s closing poem “Headliners” is wide-lined, white-spaced and actively hopeful in that respect.
I cut out pictures of beautiful white women in magazines
I cut around each of their fingers
& stick my tongue out while doing it so no one thinks I am taking them too seriously
On this note, I will finish by saying that these poems should be taken seriously, but also playfully, imaginatively, inventively… Each time I re-read, I notice different things and make new connections. While I can’t successfully summarise the chapbook – the poems themselves have to be read – the essence of it is poetry that is beautifully (if sometimes painfully) alive and striking.
Feb 24 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Cia Mangat
Poetry review – LOBE
Sarah Leavesley admires both the variety and the connectedness on show in Cia Mangat’s chapbook
lobe
Cia Mangat
Smith|Doorstep Books
978-1-914914-97-3
24 pages £6
Every time I try to sum up lobe, the contents resist. This may be a short chapbook but no description will contain it entirely – Cia Mangat’s poems expand in so many directions, yet without breaking any of the different connections I can follow through them.
I’ll start with the opening poem, “behind”, when I say that it’s about what’s gone before:
[…] don’t they say
that you exist inside your mother and her mother and her mother
so I’ve been there tinily inside hundreds of tentative wedding night kisses
before me […]
What’s gone before includes family, but also celebrities, Diana Princess of Wales in particular. As this and the quote above might suggest, these are poems about womanhood. Also, sexuality and how women look, including clothes and different parts of the body. In all of this, we have the contrast between the surface and what lies, or might lie, behind it. Nothing here comes without a sense of expectations.
The title poem, “Lobe”, is about ear-piercings but so much more as well, progressing from ‘1. ‘This won’t hurt for long,’ […]’ to asking for hair to be cut by clippers instead, then: ‘12. Matching like a pair of earrings (like couplets)’. The further 8 lines that follow include ‘14. Two or three pairs of hoops in to hold you down at night’ and the narrator tugging her earlobes in apology.
Many expectations come from others, including genderisations. But that doesn’t stop them being internalised, as explored in “sometimes I wonder if my ma is right & I do actually fancy boys”. The narrator in “george michael’s still a superstar and you still listen to wham” buys a poster of him for her mother because she is ‘the perfect daughter’. Likewise, perhaps, it’s why she dreams of marrying a man. This poem itself reads like a dream though. Such a gift might be given and received with love but that doesn’t make for easy relationships between what family/ society hope for and the everyday reality that is individual/ personal.
Similarities and differences are picked up on in various ways across these poems. In terms of my engagement and enjoyment as a reader, my personal experiences/ background/ life are sometimes similar and other times very different. But in both cases, the poems are striking and easy to either identify or empathise with. I may not have faced the same situations but what woman/ reader/ person has ever totally fitted what others seem to expect from them?
There are many interesting motifs that recur across lobe. Some I’ve touched upon already. Hair/ haircuts/ the barber and secrets are two others that are particularly significant. Their importance is part of the what lies behind appearances element but the latter also points to another aspect of the poems’ appeal: the sense of letting us in on secrets and being part of intimacies. This is also brought about by the use of the second person in many poems. If not completely within each experience, we are very close to it and it matters.
my head in your lap your hands
in my hair learning to swim
(“oil poem”)
I’ve not yet touched on form. As the quotes above may suggest, many (though not all!) of the poems use space and line breaks without/ in place of punctuation and normal sentence presentation. This shouldn’t be mistaken for lack of variety though. Form here ranges through long lines, numbered lines, narrow lines, what reads like a daring sonnet (“Don’t Do It Di”), indented lines and poems spread sideways across two pages. As with the contents, a lot of ground is covered in only 16 poems, with white-spacing as one thread running through them.
While it’s possible to read too much into what is and isn’t embodying about such choices, what strikes me most as a reader is the sense of being confined by the lines/ expectations in places, with the white spaces offering the possibility of, or the need for, escape.
Mangat’s closing poem “Headliners” is wide-lined, white-spaced and actively hopeful in that respect.
I cut out pictures of beautiful white women in magazines
I cut around each of their fingers
& stick my tongue out while doing it so no one thinks I am taking them too seriously
On this note, I will finish by saying that these poems should be taken seriously, but also playfully, imaginatively, inventively… Each time I re-read, I notice different things and make new connections. While I can’t successfully summarise the chapbook – the poems themselves have to be read – the essence of it is poetry that is beautifully (if sometimes painfully) alive and striking.