Poetry review – TRAUM/A: Peter Devonald is beguiled by the vivid impressions, recollections and memories conjured up by this innovative hybrid poetry book by JP Seabright
psychology
Poetry review – THE THOUGHTS: Wendy Kyle reviews Sarah Barnsley’s very personal debut collection
Why We Sing, by Julia Hollander. Review by Barbara Lewis. Sometimes we sing because we are happy. More importantly, we sing to make ourselves happy – and not just in a good mood, but healthier, saner and part of a more cohesive community.
Poetry review – BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO LOSS IN THE MULTIVERSE: Charles Rammelkamp studies Claudine Nash‘s sympathetic and light-touch guide to coping with bereavement
Poetry review- WHEN THE SWIMMING POOL FELL INTO THE SEA: Paul McDonald champions ‘slim volumes’ and admires the way that poems enhance one another in Carole Coates’s new collection.
NEVER HIT A WOMAN, EVEN WITH A FLOWER … Kate Ashton takes a close look at recent collections by Sasha Dugdale and Patricia McCarthy and considers how well they respond to the serious issues they address
Fetishism Psychoanalysis Anthropology & Crazy Love. Review by Barbara Lewis. Psychotherapist Patricia Morris undertakes a brave, elegantly-argued and learned analysis, enriched by her years of professional experience, to pin down the meaning of one very particular word – fetishism – and explore its distortion by anthropologists.
Her Other Language: Wendy French gets to grips with a bold and frank anthology addressing domestic violence
Virgin & Child: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is intrigued by a new novel by Maggie Hamand in which a theological conundrum leads to tension – and ultimately violence – within the Vatican
Psychoanalytic psychotherapist Juliet Rosenfeld published her meditation, as her publicist so aptly describes it, on her own journey from an intellectual understanding to a deep, personal grasp of Freud’s distinction between harrowing grief and the gentler sorrow of mourning in February – when today’s equivalent of Spanish flu had begun to throw wives, husbands, children, lovers across the globe into states of emotion they may never fully process.
The Ugly Side of Beauty. Connie Woodring discusses the downside of our beauty culture as it relates to women’s physical/mental health and safety.
Poetry review – FACE IT: Jennifer Johnson considers the psychological undercurrents in a substantial first collection by M Stasiak
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, psychology, year 2026 • Tags: books, Jennifer Johnson, psychology