Bücher veröffentlicht von Knives Forks and Spoons

' ... This powerful book is well worth the money not only for its unassuming psychological insights but for the exquisite sensual images that pervade, all of which are startlingly English. Don't be deterred by the subject matter, this is not a squeamish book; it is a book that explores our values of life and it is a book about endurance and beauty. About 60 pages long, its unshrinking, forthright style make it quite quick to read (I didn't want to put it down) but the images therein linger long after the turning of each page. Pieces should not be left sitting on any publisher's shelf; it should be dog-eared and passed on.' - Carol Thistlethwaite: Tregolwyn Book Reviews Rip Bulkeley said - of some of those already published, in this case in the River King Poetry Supplement (USA) - ' ... suddenly I ran into something not just good but great, a poem which I hope has already gone round the world but if not should do so as soon as possible. It is Sam Smith's PIECES, an exhibition of 21st-century war via the small-town concentration camp ... ' - NHI Online Review ' ... a captivating exploration of love, grief, and especially hope in a prisoner of war camp ... But Pieces is also about violence, and therein lies something fascinating and even beautiful ... The lines are musical, lulling ... creates an enchanted, awful place where people are dying, where we don't want them to stop dying, so we can keep reading ... ' - Donna Biffar: Orbis #121 ' ... one of the best books to have appeared in [the] UK so far this century ... ' - Jeremy Hilton: Fire #19 ' ... The descriptive density and personal revelation of the experience give these 'pieces' poetic weight ... Smith has a winning style ... ' - The Black Mountain Review #6 ' ... Smith's language has an abstract and untethered feel, but his descriptions of the natural cycle of life continuing beyond and without reference to the prisoners are compellingly precise ... ' - L. Kiew: NHI Online Review ' ... prose-poetry items which stand alone, or as a landscape of observations ... This is a new approach; you need to read it yourself.' - Geoff Stevens: Purple Patch #101

The color blue & its aspects are, to Robert Burton, descriptors of very personal things. Many of those are examined / exposed / explained in the poems in this book called Blue. He has a knowledge of himself, &, importantly, the ability to pass on that knowledge in a well-crafted & insightful way that makes this small collection an excellent & delightful read. - Mark YoungIn Blue we are led through moments and situations that play with our understanding of reality, presence and absence, which slowly draw us in to question the 'exact shape/of an empty space'. He does it well.- Mark CobleyBlue is syntactically surprising: an exciting collection of poetry which, like good jazz, finds rhythm in the notes left unplayed and the words left unsaid. This is a layered work to return to time and again, each visit rewarded with new meaning.- Aaron Kent

Something of the spirit of Virgil's poem has been transposed to southern England in1959. All of the major and most of the minor events and characters are here, the events refracted through modernity or new narratives, the characters thinly disguised (Laocoön is Loud Colin; the harpies are Mrs Harpic; Pallas is Patsy), and the relocations easy to spot (Troy is in Richmond; Carthage is a village in Wiltshire; the games are in Weymouth; the nascent Rome is Bristol). But readers need to know nothing of The Aeneid (or even to have heard of it) to enjoy this freewheeling, humorous, and socially reflective verse novel. In an addendum, Virgil's founding myth of the Roman Empire becomes the founding myth of the digital world.

"To me, literature only works when freedoms of thought and expression are seen as essentials to liberty and life. That obviously isn't true in our culture where - at best - a crushing elite tolerates 'me speech' but not free speech. Many have suffered at their hands. I fictionalise my own experiences in The Poetry of Gin and Tea. Those misappropriated drinks represent something we've lost, linking our predicament with prophecies from the greatest of 20th-century English writers: George Orwell. He warned how this would happen, through control then destruction of our language. Supposedly done for 'progressive aims' but actually as displays of unchallengeable power, destroying our shared humanity and culture."Paul Sutton"I marvel at Paul Sutton's unique ability to confront the demons of our time and beat them at their own game - the game of words. His poetry is a subtle affront to the censorship around us. His speech is more than simply free." Ewan Morrison

the flowers were photographed in esch-sur-alzette's municipal parks a year later i found myself writing a poem in response to an image esch is a steel town, luxembourg is a rose country, i am an immigrant

"There's a jolting frankness to these poems. Sometimes oddly bare and powerful, they say what they mean." - Mark Waldron "Penny Sharman's poems have a painter's touch, not just in terms of colour, form and light as invocation but in the care with which she picks words and feels her way through them to offer magical experiences that feel fresh and precise." - George Szirtes "Penny Sharman believes in beauty. She believes in a world where "cabbage white flies low / over the singing river," "Dragon lines at Culbone," and a world where "we are canopy adrift, clouds of happy happy-happy." She's a poet who believes there's a "green door / oasis in a burnt out mind" of this century, this crisis where we all find ourselves. So, perhaps it is a blessing that there are still people like Penny Sharman, telling us that "magical plant / mistletoe / needs a / kiss" - maybe if more people thought that way, our world would be kinder. - Ilya Kaminsky"Penny Sharman writes with passion and intensity, painting the world in luminous colours. For her, the meaning is somewhere within the microcosms that make up this universe - the snowflake, the insect, the hair standing up on your skin. In many of her poems she celebrates the unexpectedpleasures of the ageing body, suggesting that the years bring, not exactly wisdom, but a shamelesscuriosity that knows it can never be fully satisfied." - Ailsa Cox

In The Geometric Kingdom Rupert Loydell and Maria Stadnicka write about loss, grief and mourning and explore how memory, faith and ritual facilitate ongoing relationships between the living and the dead. 'Loydell is mining themes that resonate with our times, leading to collaborations with a talented array of fellow poets, allowing for a synergistic pulse of varied views. He and his fellow travelers ask difficult questions and offer open-ended answers through the time-tested holy triad of ethos, logos, and pathos.' - Joey Madia, X-Peri'Stadnicka's poetics is one of craftmanship, wherein she carefully walks the tightrope of surreal poetic metaphor and the gritty realism of investigative journalism and broadcasting. Drawing on her experiences in both, Stadnicka's writing culminates into a distinctly inventive literary landscape.' - Bryony Hughes, Stride

Kianush collected and published his poems for children and young adults in eight books, all of which won different awards. He became known as the founder of children's poetry in Iran. But he does not care for this title which he believes to be quite contrary to his real achievement as the messenger of the truth hidden in the heart of perceptible realities which, in occasional blessed moments, reveals itself to him on the horizon of artistic beauty. He says that in Iran, a country where the people, especially the intelligentsia, have since the late nineteenth century been possessed by the politics of freedom and social change, the popularity of a poet depends on his being the artistic mouthpiece and interpreter of the political aspirations of the populace. On the other hand a poet like himself, one of the few poets who have not sacrificed the universal principles of the art of poetry for the pleasure of temporal popularity, is considered difficult, obscure, elitist, philosophical, idealist, and so forth.Poetry for Mahmud Kianush is the language of the childhood of historical man. He believes that the first human beings began to understand themselves, the world around them and the mysteries of the universe by their poetical interpretations of everything they saw and felt, and this is what real poets have always done and will always do. He agrees with the ancient idea that "man is a political animal," but he adds that man must remain faithful to his primordial nature and first be a poet. 

"What a drag it is getting old" was one of the few things that Belmont Thom and his wife Tuppence agreed on. With a nod to Sophocles and to Homer and with a great big genuflecting thanks-for-the-idea to the late Peter Tinniswood (who appears in the piece) Stroll On tells this couple's story. The narrative is a hybrid of two kinds: 'poem-prose' (as opposed to a prose poem) and magic-realism. 'By turns funny, brilliant, sharp, savage, and surprising, this novella in poem-prose is compulsively readable and intellectually sustaining, as well as being a terrific feat of imagination and linguistic legerdemain. In Stroll On James Russell has invented the perfect form for his good-humouredly caustic outlook on things. All human life is there. Even Alma Cogan'. - Ian Patterson'I devoured Stroll On with relish (and a side order of quadrupley-fried sweet potatoes). It's very clever and very funny (Neither/Do orgasms last long but they remain popular). Everyone who's worth it should read it'. - Andy Mayer'All this and his eye for telling details make James Russell a true story teller and a true poet'. - Lee Harwood