The best recent poetry – review roundup

Touched by Alan Buckley; Passport to Here and There by Grace Nichols; Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt; Later Emperors Evan Jones

“I bring you no fireworks”, claims Alan Buckley’s poem “Flame”, musing on a matchbox’s instruction to “use sparingly”. Touched (Happenstance, £10) is a debut collection that understands the value of subtlety and restraint, exploring personal trauma and the “fragile, desperate weight” of our lives through poems that speak elegantly of hard-won insight. “You shouldn’t ask how we’re doing this, but why”, proffers a fire eater in “Psychotherapy”. Taking as its subject a trip to the dentist, “Clinical” wonders “when the numbness will go”. Wisdom, like rhyme, is an optional ingredient in poetry, but when it is authentic, its effect can be both memorable and moving. Buckley has the confidence and skill to speak to us directly, even while his poems chart themes of uncertainty, memory and loss.