Poetry review – SOMETHING LIKE GRACE: Jennifer Johnson follows Annie Forbes as she uses poetry to explore different understandings of grace
Something like Grace
Annie Forbes
Mica Press & Campanula Books
ISBN 978-1-869848-44-6
28pp £8.00
Annie Forbes was born in Edinburgh but spent part of her childhood in Northern Ireland. She has had poems published in a range of magazines and won the Jane Martin Prize for Poetry from Girton College, Cambridge in 2020. Something Like Grace is her impressive first pamphlet.
The title poem ‘Something Like Grace’, with which the collection begins, leads the reader to an awareness of grace both in a secular and a religious sense (although the latter may not be understood here in an entirely conventional fashion). A momento mori theme links many poems in the collection, with death being often represented not by the usual symbol of a skull but by complete skeletons. ‘Something Like Grace’ begins
Let’s address the skeleton
of a lesser spotted deer
culled at the very cusp of its maturity.
The poem then goes on to a determined understanding of how the deer’s bones “were first assembled”. Later in the poem the reader introduces a spiritual context.
Certain schools of thought
point to the existence of
some sphere of perfect holiness
which, from the trappings of our own
patently unholy state
we are unable to conceive of.
Here the reader is made aware of both a secular grace of earthly elegance, represented by the skeleton, and a religious one which allows us to contemplate “perfect holiness”, the very nature of God. The materialistic world, as represented by the “twisted up metal” of the car crash that is mentioned in the following stanza, relates to our “unholy state” which may be incapable of conceiving any “sphere of perfect holiness.” The word holy is derived from the Old English h?lig meaning unhurt and is linked to the secular word holistic with its suggestion of completeness and possibly purity. This is particularly important in poems, such as this one, which express fragmentation – for instance when the narrator tells us about discovering “things we will continue to lose”.
The poems in this collection display an earthly grace in rhythms that feel exactly right and which are combined with a rich soundscape. In the poem ‘Distancing’, for example, Forbes writes of “the mournfulness of rivers” and “New potentialities of dailiness”; and such memorable phrases are to be found in many of the poems. Consider “starlings/breasting the sky” in ‘Stillborn’; or a rain cloud “sidestepping telegraph poles/dodging the husks of burnt-out cars” in ‘Absolution’; or “a clutch of deckchairs scattering the lawn” in ‘Intrusion’. In ‘Day Thoughts’ the narrator searches “in the trickier parts of mirrors”, hoping to find someone who is no longer around.
‘Multiplication’ is a powerful poem expressing the complex feelings that come with the death of a baby. The narrator tells us:
To hold you and lose you in quick succession
Was a bliss-tinged grief too strange to define,
Like biting an apple corrupt at the core
In the poem ‘Learning’ there is a description of a daughter observing her father weeping over his friend who was “lost to a length of rope”. The father’s tears fell “over the ash-scarred surfaces of our table”. The ash may refer both to cigarette ash and to Genesis 3:19 “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” often cited on Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent. However Forbes shows a narrator who is far from being a conventional Christian when she says
But I have never really been convinced
by such tired-out notions
of the finitude of grace
And I was already lost –
in the details of a painting
years and years away
from the pressures of linear time.
The narrator does not accept the unquestioned human limitations implied by the notion of “finitude of grace”. She has become absorbed by “the details of a painting” which represents not a snapshot in “linear time”, but a creation made from repeated experiences over a longer period. The impressionist painting mentioned earlier in the poem, in which the woman is “muddied”, adds to a sense of movement outside time.
However, the final poem ‘Solace’ shows a partial acceptance by the narrator of their loss.
Today
Everything is nothing more than gentle.
Little leaves
Steady against the ground. And the thought
You would have liked them.
Even in grieving, the narrator becomes grateful for a day that is “nothing more than gentle”.
I highly recommend this pamphlet as the writing is exquisite and memorable and the subject matter is intense and thoughtfully challenging.
May 21 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Annie Forbes
Poetry review – SOMETHING LIKE GRACE: Jennifer Johnson follows Annie Forbes as she uses poetry to explore different understandings of grace
Something like Grace
Annie Forbes
Mica Press & Campanula Books
ISBN 978-1-869848-44-6
28pp £8.00
Annie Forbes was born in Edinburgh but spent part of her childhood in Northern Ireland. She has had poems published in a range of magazines and won the Jane Martin Prize for Poetry from Girton College, Cambridge in 2020. Something Like Grace is her impressive first pamphlet.
The title poem ‘Something Like Grace’, with which the collection begins, leads the reader to an awareness of grace both in a secular and a religious sense (although the latter may not be understood here in an entirely conventional fashion). A momento mori theme links many poems in the collection, with death being often represented not by the usual symbol of a skull but by complete skeletons. ‘Something Like Grace’ begins
Let’s address the skeleton
of a lesser spotted deer
culled at the very cusp of its maturity.
The poem then goes on to a determined understanding of how the deer’s bones “were first assembled”. Later in the poem the reader introduces a spiritual context.
Certain schools of thought
point to the existence of
some sphere of perfect holiness
which, from the trappings of our own
patently unholy state
we are unable to conceive of.
Here the reader is made aware of both a secular grace of earthly elegance, represented by the skeleton, and a religious one which allows us to contemplate “perfect holiness”, the very nature of God. The materialistic world, as represented by the “twisted up metal” of the car crash that is mentioned in the following stanza, relates to our “unholy state” which may be incapable of conceiving any “sphere of perfect holiness.” The word holy is derived from the Old English h?lig meaning unhurt and is linked to the secular word holistic with its suggestion of completeness and possibly purity. This is particularly important in poems, such as this one, which express fragmentation – for instance when the narrator tells us about discovering “things we will continue to lose”.
The poems in this collection display an earthly grace in rhythms that feel exactly right and which are combined with a rich soundscape. In the poem ‘Distancing’, for example, Forbes writes of “the mournfulness of rivers” and “New potentialities of dailiness”; and such memorable phrases are to be found in many of the poems. Consider “starlings/breasting the sky” in ‘Stillborn’; or a rain cloud “sidestepping telegraph poles/dodging the husks of burnt-out cars” in ‘Absolution’; or “a clutch of deckchairs scattering the lawn” in ‘Intrusion’. In ‘Day Thoughts’ the narrator searches “in the trickier parts of mirrors”, hoping to find someone who is no longer around.
‘Multiplication’ is a powerful poem expressing the complex feelings that come with the death of a baby. The narrator tells us:
To hold you and lose you in quick succession
Was a bliss-tinged grief too strange to define,
Like biting an apple corrupt at the core
In the poem ‘Learning’ there is a description of a daughter observing her father weeping over his friend who was “lost to a length of rope”. The father’s tears fell “over the ash-scarred surfaces of our table”. The ash may refer both to cigarette ash and to Genesis 3:19 “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” often cited on Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent. However Forbes shows a narrator who is far from being a conventional Christian when she says
But I have never really been convinced
by such tired-out notions
of the finitude of grace
And I was already lost –
in the details of a painting
years and years away
from the pressures of linear time.
The narrator does not accept the unquestioned human limitations implied by the notion of “finitude of grace”. She has become absorbed by “the details of a painting” which represents not a snapshot in “linear time”, but a creation made from repeated experiences over a longer period. The impressionist painting mentioned earlier in the poem, in which the woman is “muddied”, adds to a sense of movement outside time.
However, the final poem ‘Solace’ shows a partial acceptance by the narrator of their loss.
Today
Everything is nothing more than gentle.
Little leaves
Steady against the ground. And the thought
You would have liked them.
Even in grieving, the narrator becomes grateful for a day that is “nothing more than gentle”.
I highly recommend this pamphlet as the writing is exquisite and memorable and the subject matter is intense and thoughtfully challenging.