Poetry review – TIPS FOR COLLECTORS OF THE MACABRE: Pat Edwards finds that Jennie E Owen can make engaging poetry out of seemingly unpromising subject matter
Tips for Collectors of the Macabre
Jennie E. Owen
Yaffle Press
ISBN 978-1-913122-91-1
£12
Well, here’s a strange collection, running from the opening sonnet, ostensibly about boiling her own brain, to the final poem about a ghostly woman in a lake. All the intervening poems focus on autopsy, dead creatures, decomposition, embalmment, anything and everything death-related. You may ask why; but then again why not? Death is inevitable and real and is a fascination to many, if we’re honest. Yes, it’s macabre as the title suggests, but there is science, reflection, honesty, and even magic.
I think the trick for the writer is to be bold and confident, not shying away from the disgusting, the grotesque. Owen is fearless in how she tackles this material, going to places others might avoid or be nervous about confronting. Another tactic might be cold detachment so that the writing is frank and unflinching. There’s no point attempting a collection like this if you’re going to walk on eggshells and pander to the sensitivities of the faint hearted.
So, our bodies are pretty familiar to us, we know their flesh, their bone, the blood. We understand articulation, types of tissue, function, because we’ve seen text books, documentaries, horror films. In many of these poems, the writer refers to what we think we know, but she makes us all by-standers and on-lookers as she shares out-of-body experiences. Owen includes other creatures and objects – not just human beings, but also butterflies and moths, ghosts, hair, specific body parts and all the paraphernalia of death.
As a reviewer, it’s hard to know where to start. I could actually comment on every poem, such is the range of styles and different focuses. I think I want to highlight poems that particularly appealed to me and which struck me by their daring and craft. Take for example ‘How my bodyworks’ (yes, all one word), in which the body is drained and pumped with “epoxy resin” and positioned “in some heroic form” rather than that of a writer “pale with pen and desk.” I love that the idea of a poet “hunched” over their writing is no way to be preserved and remembered!
Another poem is so short and shocking that I can quote it in its entirety:
For Sale
Baby feet in formaldehyde
(Glass jar included)
Never used
This is clever writing, to mimic the kind of ad you might see in a newspaper or on an on-line site, offering the pre-loved, the secondhand, but where the item for sale is so emotive and unexpected.
Before photography was invented, it was possible to get an artist to paint dead loved ones. Such mourning portraits are considered in ‘Painting the dead’ where
Room lighting is key for the task
bright daylight, the best. Old newspapers
essential to catch the spills, plus kitchen paper
to suction excess drops
This reference to kitchen paper feels odd and out of place as it is surely a modern invention? However, it just adds to the weirdness of trying to “bring back the dead” by hanging “them brightly in the next room.”
There are a number of poems which mention the death of children, probably because infant and child death was quite common before improvements in obstetrics and in living conditions. I much admire the poem ‘Sleeping beauty’ about the embalmed body of a two-year-old girl. It clinically reminds us that:
The little girl’s body will retain its heat
whilst in her mother’s embrace
transferred long after she has passed,
the damp fever curls upon her head
will sheen…
the act of sleep a lie
The poem describes the moment “when they must wrench/each of the mother’s fingers” away from her child. It’s heartbreaking and the tragic death is captured for all time in the embalmed corpse. The title of the poem chillingly borrows from Disney and from the fairy tale where a kiss can revive the dead.
Another focus for Owen is the significance of the head. Several poems mention heads, how they carry our brains, maybe our personalities and individuality. In ‘Marc Quinn (“Self”)’ we learn of the artist who has produced a series of sculptures using plaster casts filled with his own blood and immersed in frozen silicone blocks:
Look/don’t look
at the salty Penny luck
blackcurrant
coloured clot…
you’re thinking of ruby
coloured slush
thinking of words
like viscosity
Who can blame the poet for finding this horrific yet captivating, as if she wants to celebrate the sheer invention and endeavour of this modern-day artist?
Equally disturbing is ‘The cleaner pays a visit’ in which Owen imagines the “blood,/shite, semen, crust of vomit, engorged maggots”, all that remains of rotting bodies resembling Jackson Pollock paintings. “Delivered into my care, when all’s said and done it’s all/the same to the black bin bag heart of me”, the cleaner whistles while she works.
Not all adventurers and climbers make it when they tackle the world’s great mountains. Some are lost and buried by avalanches or years of snowfall. In ‘Melt’ Owen writes of their bodies reappearing in the spring when the mountain starts to thaw:
Lovers still in frozen embrace
march arm in arm back to us;
to their children
If you are a brave tourist happy to try out local delicacies, perhaps Hakarl is for you. This “pungent national dish of Iceland” is fermented shark, hung and left to dry for months. Described in the poem ‘Rosie’, the poet recognises this may be “an acquired taste” although the title, Rosie, actually refers to a preserved Great White shark now located in Australia. What is it about humans that they find ways of preparing rotting flesh as food “degraded, degrading”?
‘Ten tips for collectors of the macabre’ is a wonderful tongue-in-cheek guide for anyone who is inspired by Owen to join her quest for “human freaks” and the like. Nothing seems off limits – “letters from serial killers…human hair…animal anomalies.”
- Never let those who cannot appreciate your aesthetic
get you down or put you off. YOU DO NOT
‘PLUNDER’ you are making of death, a thing of beauty
and wonder.
In a triptych of poems about specific body parts, ‘Galileo’s finger’ and ‘Einstein’s brain’ pale into insignificance alongside ‘Rasputin’s penis, with Boney M’. If you know the chart-topping song about Rasputin and the slang name for a hard on, you’ll appreciate the humour in this title! Could it be his private part was just “a wizened sea cucumber” or even “12 inches of equine phallus”?
From this hilarity to the awful fading floral tributes often seen on the roadside. In ‘Flowers’ Owen thinks of “the parents that wrung/out their hearts in the twilight” and “the tainted spot” where loved ones perished. It’s so inventive of Owen to stretch her treatment of dead things to include these bunches of flowers, themselves fading and dying “in their plastic wrappers.”
There is something very warm about the poetry in ‘A Fat Lady dies’. I’m guessing Owen is writing here about a generic version of this fairground attraction of years gone by, the obese woman gawped at for “her rolls and undulating” body. Owen paints her as liked, admired, certainly loved by her spouse:
If only her heart could be reinforced
as easily as a floor, a bed, a chair,
her husband said.
The poem ‘The City of Lost Girls’ refers to a documentary about a suspected serial killer reputed to have raped and murdered hundreds of women near the Mexican border. In the poem pictures posted by families trying to trace their loved ones are now tattered
Strolling past
someone’s daughter
someone’s sister, ripped
walkway of complicity.
I must say, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this collection. Who knew that poems about such dark subject matter could be so entertaining? I think it’s the skill of the poet, her outstanding variety and profound ability to capture human feelings, frailties, and fears. This elevates the work from simply shock value musings to something essential and smart, worthy of the reader’s time.
Jun 16 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Jennie E Owen
Poetry review – TIPS FOR COLLECTORS OF THE MACABRE: Pat Edwards finds that Jennie E Owen can make engaging poetry out of seemingly unpromising subject matter
Tips for Collectors of the Macabre
Jennie E. Owen
Yaffle Press
ISBN 978-1-913122-91-1
£12
Well, here’s a strange collection, running from the opening sonnet, ostensibly about boiling her own brain, to the final poem about a ghostly woman in a lake. All the intervening poems focus on autopsy, dead creatures, decomposition, embalmment, anything and everything death-related. You may ask why; but then again why not? Death is inevitable and real and is a fascination to many, if we’re honest. Yes, it’s macabre as the title suggests, but there is science, reflection, honesty, and even magic.
I think the trick for the writer is to be bold and confident, not shying away from the disgusting, the grotesque. Owen is fearless in how she tackles this material, going to places others might avoid or be nervous about confronting. Another tactic might be cold detachment so that the writing is frank and unflinching. There’s no point attempting a collection like this if you’re going to walk on eggshells and pander to the sensitivities of the faint hearted.
So, our bodies are pretty familiar to us, we know their flesh, their bone, the blood. We understand articulation, types of tissue, function, because we’ve seen text books, documentaries, horror films. In many of these poems, the writer refers to what we think we know, but she makes us all by-standers and on-lookers as she shares out-of-body experiences. Owen includes other creatures and objects – not just human beings, but also butterflies and moths, ghosts, hair, specific body parts and all the paraphernalia of death.
As a reviewer, it’s hard to know where to start. I could actually comment on every poem, such is the range of styles and different focuses. I think I want to highlight poems that particularly appealed to me and which struck me by their daring and craft. Take for example ‘How my bodyworks’ (yes, all one word), in which the body is drained and pumped with “epoxy resin” and positioned “in some heroic form” rather than that of a writer “pale with pen and desk.” I love that the idea of a poet “hunched” over their writing is no way to be preserved and remembered!
Another poem is so short and shocking that I can quote it in its entirety:
For Sale
Baby feet in formaldehyde
(Glass jar included)
Never used
This is clever writing, to mimic the kind of ad you might see in a newspaper or on an on-line site, offering the pre-loved, the secondhand, but where the item for sale is so emotive and unexpected.
Before photography was invented, it was possible to get an artist to paint dead loved ones. Such mourning portraits are considered in ‘Painting the dead’ where
Room lighting is key for the task
bright daylight, the best. Old newspapers
essential to catch the spills, plus kitchen paper
to suction excess drops
This reference to kitchen paper feels odd and out of place as it is surely a modern invention? However, it just adds to the weirdness of trying to “bring back the dead” by hanging “them brightly in the next room.”
There are a number of poems which mention the death of children, probably because infant and child death was quite common before improvements in obstetrics and in living conditions. I much admire the poem ‘Sleeping beauty’ about the embalmed body of a two-year-old girl. It clinically reminds us that:
The little girl’s body will retain its heat
whilst in her mother’s embrace
transferred long after she has passed,
the damp fever curls upon her head
will sheen…
the act of sleep a lie
The poem describes the moment “when they must wrench/each of the mother’s fingers” away from her child. It’s heartbreaking and the tragic death is captured for all time in the embalmed corpse. The title of the poem chillingly borrows from Disney and from the fairy tale where a kiss can revive the dead.
Another focus for Owen is the significance of the head. Several poems mention heads, how they carry our brains, maybe our personalities and individuality. In ‘Marc Quinn (“Self”)’ we learn of the artist who has produced a series of sculptures using plaster casts filled with his own blood and immersed in frozen silicone blocks:
Look/don’t look
at the salty Penny luck
blackcurrant
coloured clot…
you’re thinking of ruby
coloured slush
thinking of words
like viscosity
Who can blame the poet for finding this horrific yet captivating, as if she wants to celebrate the sheer invention and endeavour of this modern-day artist?
Equally disturbing is ‘The cleaner pays a visit’ in which Owen imagines the “blood,/shite, semen, crust of vomit, engorged maggots”, all that remains of rotting bodies resembling Jackson Pollock paintings. “Delivered into my care, when all’s said and done it’s all/the same to the black bin bag heart of me”, the cleaner whistles while she works.
Not all adventurers and climbers make it when they tackle the world’s great mountains. Some are lost and buried by avalanches or years of snowfall. In ‘Melt’ Owen writes of their bodies reappearing in the spring when the mountain starts to thaw:
Lovers still in frozen embrace
march arm in arm back to us;
to their children
If you are a brave tourist happy to try out local delicacies, perhaps Hakarl is for you. This “pungent national dish of Iceland” is fermented shark, hung and left to dry for months. Described in the poem ‘Rosie’, the poet recognises this may be “an acquired taste” although the title, Rosie, actually refers to a preserved Great White shark now located in Australia. What is it about humans that they find ways of preparing rotting flesh as food “degraded, degrading”?
‘Ten tips for collectors of the macabre’ is a wonderful tongue-in-cheek guide for anyone who is inspired by Owen to join her quest for “human freaks” and the like. Nothing seems off limits – “letters from serial killers…human hair…animal anomalies.”
get you down or put you off. YOU DO NOT
‘PLUNDER’ you are making of death, a thing of beauty
and wonder.
In a triptych of poems about specific body parts, ‘Galileo’s finger’ and ‘Einstein’s brain’ pale into insignificance alongside ‘Rasputin’s penis, with Boney M’. If you know the chart-topping song about Rasputin and the slang name for a hard on, you’ll appreciate the humour in this title! Could it be his private part was just “a wizened sea cucumber” or even “12 inches of equine phallus”?
From this hilarity to the awful fading floral tributes often seen on the roadside. In ‘Flowers’ Owen thinks of “the parents that wrung/out their hearts in the twilight” and “the tainted spot” where loved ones perished. It’s so inventive of Owen to stretch her treatment of dead things to include these bunches of flowers, themselves fading and dying “in their plastic wrappers.”
There is something very warm about the poetry in ‘A Fat Lady dies’. I’m guessing Owen is writing here about a generic version of this fairground attraction of years gone by, the obese woman gawped at for “her rolls and undulating” body. Owen paints her as liked, admired, certainly loved by her spouse:
If only her heart could be reinforced
as easily as a floor, a bed, a chair,
her husband said.
The poem ‘The City of Lost Girls’ refers to a documentary about a suspected serial killer reputed to have raped and murdered hundreds of women near the Mexican border. In the poem pictures posted by families trying to trace their loved ones are now tattered
Strolling past
someone’s daughter
someone’s sister, ripped
walkway of complicity.
I must say, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this collection. Who knew that poems about such dark subject matter could be so entertaining? I think it’s the skill of the poet, her outstanding variety and profound ability to capture human feelings, frailties, and fears. This elevates the work from simply shock value musings to something essential and smart, worthy of the reader’s time.