Poetry review – FAMILY MATTERS: Rosie Johnston surveys a third volume of poems from members of the ‘Dark Angels’ writing group, compiled by its founder, John Simmons
Family Matters
edited by John Simmons
Paekakariki Press (2026)
ISBN 9781908133656
58pp £15.00
There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.’ So said Robert Graves (poet, novelist, genius behind ‘-I, Claudius) and it’s something poets have been discussing in pubs ever since. But Wallace Stevens (insurance executive and modernist poet) is reported to have said that ‘Money is a kind of poetry’. So together they take us by the hand into the work of John Simmons’ ‘Dark Angels’, an organisation that has been encouraging writers in the business world since 2004. Simmons tells us: ‘Using techniques from fiction and poetry, writers emerged from Dark Angels courses with a deep commitment to craft, creativity, and personal writing. As a result many have become novelist and poets.’
This book and its two predecessors are of poetry only, all published by Matt McKenzie’s letterpress workshop, Paekakariki Press in Walthamstow. Holding a Paekakariki book is always something to celebrate, not only for the quality of its contents but for the beauty of the book itself. We are told that this one – inside a plush purple dust jacket with a silver sketch by Lydia Thornley – is ‘typeset in 12 pt Adobe Garamond and printed on 120 gsm Fedrigoni Arena Natural Smooth’.
Book One (2023) of this Paekakariki/ Dark Angels series features Therese Kieran, Tim Rich and Simmons himself. The second (And So We Grow, 2024) concentrates on ‘personal development through writing’ and draws together several writers from the 2023 Bloomsbury Festival.
By this third volume appears, the ‘Dark Angels Circle’ is meeting quarterly online and they have the courage to tackle a ‘family matters’ theme, concentrating on parent-child relationships. Eighteen poets are included, with the final ten pages given over to Galen O’Hanlon who grew up in Oxford and now lives with his young family in Surrey.
The first poet to catch my eye is Neil Baker whose “Man and Boy” series conjures both his father and his son with conversational simplicity. Number 3 describes flu in his father’s care home:
a whisper tells me
next year is his last
I don’t want to hear it
I’d do well to listen
the world is turning
as it must
For parents of sons who cook (as mine do), part 4 of the same poem begins:
I find my son in the kitchen
making us pasta
how beautiful that is
how lucky I am to see it
The collection moves from Baker’s quiet, ambling style to Susannah Hart’s “Tombstone, Middlesex”:
My mother was a sheriff and she ruled our semi
exactly like a frontier town. On her housecoat
every morning she pinned her Brassoed sheriff’s star.
Her Marigolds were holstered at her side, ready
to be drawn at the first sign of dried-on Weetabix.
This is a woman whose evening walk with the labrador ends up in a saloon where she downs whisky and drives ‘the vagabonds straight out of town’.
Several of the poems feel as though the first draft arrived by a parent’s hospital bedside. Publisher Matt McKenzie’s “The Bedspread” is a beautifully underwritten (only eight lines) description of how a new embroidered bedspread on a hospice bed is a sign that the patient’s life is drawing to a close.
One of the wittiest parent poems is Stuart Delves’s “This be the Converse”, a perky inversion of Larkin’s “This Be The Verse”:
They can luck you out, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do
They fill you with the riches they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Sometimes parents, though they didn’t have the best start themselves, do ‘hand on wisdom to man / Which deepens like a coastal shelf’; a truth worth saying in this lovely parody.
A poet who combines gentleness with his unsparing eye is Tim Rich who appears in all three of these Dark Angels / Paekakariki collaborations. Clothing can be an unexpectedly heartbreaking part of grief, a father’s jersey, a mother’s old lipstick, and Rich’s “Full of Infinity” starts with his father’s suit:
His brown suit, backstreet tailored,
was frayed in circles at its sleeve ends,
wool seasoned with bonfires,
Swarfega, soft apples,
motor oil.
He decides to ‘hold this man / blameless’ and allows himself to arrive by the fourth stanza at this:
It can take a son a lifetime before
he understands that he is free
to set down the bones of his father.
Yes, it feels ruthless to leave what was
alone, there in the ground of the past
but earth welcomes a man home
and the new man has his opportunity
Rich is a poet worth coming back to for the ease of his depth, the plain elegance of his words and stunning similes. This is from “Returning”:
That voice
like bad breath through a cold trumpet
running up and down the scales of their wisdom
Featured poet Galen O’Hanlon closes the collection with delicate poems that use moments to summon high emotion. “No one mentioned the ocean” is about new-baby heaven and the first stanza lists the well-rehearsed problems of new parenthood: ‘Scissors on gristle, snap through a soft rubber hose.’ Then comes the second stanza:
But no one mentioned the ocean
of endless love that would pour
into our lives, great waves
carrying us from one moment
to the next. I smell your head
and set sail once more.
Another love poem is about an indent on the pillow
When you are not there to walk half a step ahead,
to tell me what you’ve read, what made you laugh.
When you’re not there to splash your laugh
through my day.
When you are not there, but there you’ve left
a warm dip in the bed, and the pillow still
remembers your head.
O’Hanlon’s section closes with “I walked out one frosty spring morning”, an exquisite piece about how a place can bring a sudden attack of memories. Written with a broad-brush lyricism reminiscent of both Yeats and Heaney, this memory of O’Hanlon’s grandfather comes to life from the feel of oak bark and a tree line on the horizon:
And then there he was, a memory –
his hand, huge, taking mine,
the skin thin as an onion’s,
nicked by a thorn at the trough,
leading me through the heavy
calm of his cows in the barn,
their breath steaming the morning air.
The Dark Angels books combine all sorts of voices, styles and levels of optimism, with a sense that the writers are having fun while they develop their craft. All are well worth shelling out for. Will they ever write about money or business? Maybe it’s as Jerry Seinfeld said: ‘I like money, but it’s never been about the money’.
Rosie Johnston’s latest poetry book, Safe Ground (Mica Press, 2025), follows four published by Lapwing Publications in Belfast. Her poetry is anthologised by Live Canon, Arlen House, OneWorld’s ‘Places of Poetry’ anthology, Fevers of the Mind and American Writers Review. Her next book is non-fiction about how to sustain a steady writing process, scheduled for 2027 publication by Colorful Crow in the USA. www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com
Oct 6 2026
Family Matters
Poetry review – FAMILY MATTERS: Rosie Johnston surveys a third volume of poems from members of the ‘Dark Angels’ writing group, compiled by its founder, John Simmons
Family Matters
edited by John Simmons
Paekakariki Press (2026)
ISBN 9781908133656
58pp £15.00
There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.’ So said Robert Graves (poet, novelist, genius behind ‘-I, Claudius) and it’s something poets have been discussing in pubs ever since. But Wallace Stevens (insurance executive and modernist poet) is reported to have said that ‘Money is a kind of poetry’. So together they take us by the hand into the work of John Simmons’ ‘Dark Angels’, an organisation that has been encouraging writers in the business world since 2004. Simmons tells us: ‘Using techniques from fiction and poetry, writers emerged from Dark Angels courses with a deep commitment to craft, creativity, and personal writing. As a result many have become novelist and poets.’
This book and its two predecessors are of poetry only, all published by Matt McKenzie’s letterpress workshop, Paekakariki Press in Walthamstow. Holding a Paekakariki book is always something to celebrate, not only for the quality of its contents but for the beauty of the book itself. We are told that this one – inside a plush purple dust jacket with a silver sketch by Lydia Thornley – is ‘typeset in 12 pt Adobe Garamond and printed on 120 gsm Fedrigoni Arena Natural Smooth’.
Book One (2023) of this Paekakariki/ Dark Angels series features Therese Kieran, Tim Rich and Simmons himself. The second (And So We Grow, 2024) concentrates on ‘personal development through writing’ and draws together several writers from the 2023 Bloomsbury Festival.
By this third volume appears, the ‘Dark Angels Circle’ is meeting quarterly online and they have the courage to tackle a ‘family matters’ theme, concentrating on parent-child relationships. Eighteen poets are included, with the final ten pages given over to Galen O’Hanlon who grew up in Oxford and now lives with his young family in Surrey.
The first poet to catch my eye is Neil Baker whose “Man and Boy” series conjures both his father and his son with conversational simplicity. Number 3 describes flu in his father’s care home:
a whisper tells me
next year is his last
I don’t want to hear it
I’d do well to listen
the world is turning
as it must
For parents of sons who cook (as mine do), part 4 of the same poem begins:
I find my son in the kitchen
making us pasta
how beautiful that is
how lucky I am to see it
The collection moves from Baker’s quiet, ambling style to Susannah Hart’s “Tombstone, Middlesex”:
My mother was a sheriff and she ruled our semi
exactly like a frontier town. On her housecoat
every morning she pinned her Brassoed sheriff’s star.
Her Marigolds were holstered at her side, ready
to be drawn at the first sign of dried-on Weetabix.
This is a woman whose evening walk with the labrador ends up in a saloon where she downs whisky and drives ‘the vagabonds straight out of town’.
Several of the poems feel as though the first draft arrived by a parent’s hospital bedside. Publisher Matt McKenzie’s “The Bedspread” is a beautifully underwritten (only eight lines) description of how a new embroidered bedspread on a hospice bed is a sign that the patient’s life is drawing to a close.
One of the wittiest parent poems is Stuart Delves’s “This be the Converse”, a perky inversion of Larkin’s “This Be The Verse”:
They can luck you out, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do
They fill you with the riches they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Sometimes parents, though they didn’t have the best start themselves, do ‘hand on wisdom to man / Which deepens like a coastal shelf’; a truth worth saying in this lovely parody.
A poet who combines gentleness with his unsparing eye is Tim Rich who appears in all three of these Dark Angels / Paekakariki collaborations. Clothing can be an unexpectedly heartbreaking part of grief, a father’s jersey, a mother’s old lipstick, and Rich’s “Full of Infinity” starts with his father’s suit:
His brown suit, backstreet tailored,
was frayed in circles at its sleeve ends,
wool seasoned with bonfires,
Swarfega, soft apples,
motor oil.
He decides to ‘hold this man / blameless’ and allows himself to arrive by the fourth stanza at this:
It can take a son a lifetime before
he understands that he is free
to set down the bones of his father.
Yes, it feels ruthless to leave what was
alone, there in the ground of the past
but earth welcomes a man home
and the new man has his opportunity
Rich is a poet worth coming back to for the ease of his depth, the plain elegance of his words and stunning similes. This is from “Returning”:
That voice
like bad breath through a cold trumpet
running up and down the scales of their wisdom
Featured poet Galen O’Hanlon closes the collection with delicate poems that use moments to summon high emotion. “No one mentioned the ocean” is about new-baby heaven and the first stanza lists the well-rehearsed problems of new parenthood: ‘Scissors on gristle, snap through a soft rubber hose.’ Then comes the second stanza:
But no one mentioned the ocean
of endless love that would pour
into our lives, great waves
carrying us from one moment
to the next. I smell your head
and set sail once more.
Another love poem is about an indent on the pillow
When you are not there to walk half a step ahead,
to tell me what you’ve read, what made you laugh.
When you’re not there to splash your laugh
through my day.
When you are not there, but there you’ve left
a warm dip in the bed, and the pillow still
remembers your head.
O’Hanlon’s section closes with “I walked out one frosty spring morning”, an exquisite piece about how a place can bring a sudden attack of memories. Written with a broad-brush lyricism reminiscent of both Yeats and Heaney, this memory of O’Hanlon’s grandfather comes to life from the feel of oak bark and a tree line on the horizon:
And then there he was, a memory –
his hand, huge, taking mine,
the skin thin as an onion’s,
nicked by a thorn at the trough,
leading me through the heavy
calm of his cows in the barn,
their breath steaming the morning air.
The Dark Angels books combine all sorts of voices, styles and levels of optimism, with a sense that the writers are having fun while they develop their craft. All are well worth shelling out for. Will they ever write about money or business? Maybe it’s as Jerry Seinfeld said: ‘I like money, but it’s never been about the money’.
Rosie Johnston’s latest poetry book, Safe Ground (Mica Press, 2025), follows four published by Lapwing Publications in Belfast. Her poetry is anthologised by Live Canon, Arlen House, OneWorld’s ‘Places of Poetry’ anthology, Fevers of the Mind and American Writers Review. Her next book is non-fiction about how to sustain a steady writing process, scheduled for 2027 publication by Colorful Crow in the USA. www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com