The Mizzy by Paul Farley; The Book of Taliesin translated by Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams; After Cézanne by Maitreyabandhu; and Afterwardness by Mimi Khalvati
Paul Farley’s fifth collection The Mizzy (Picador, £14.99), shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, is full of characteristic encounters with the symbolic, immaculately rendered. While “Glade” opens “the long loan book of recurring dreams”, picking a “Gentian Violet” conjures up DH Lawrence when the roadside flower “cultivates more dark to flare against”. Elsewhere are raindrops, several appearances by the god Pan, a childhood playground, a series of British birds including the mistle thrush that gives the book its title and – changing the setting – a St Lucian hummingbird and “The Sloth”.
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