Angel Visits
by Garry Ely
£7.99 (pub. 2013)

Angel Visits Reviews

"Angel Visits is a delicate and moving sequence which manages, through its clarity of expression and control of language, to deal with intensely personal and painful material while never excluding the reader. Each short poem is complete in itself, emotionally rich and full of allusion and yet with never a word too many: in each, the language is pared back to the minimum to leave the central image pulsing like an exposed nerve. The cumulative result is a powerful and finely-judged insight into and evocation of love, loss and grief."

Caroline Price

"I encountered the unmistakable bullseye, the authentic maximum... when you know, by whatever means, that this is the real thing. 'Incurious,/ condemned, you go on staring at the broken shapes/ your clothes make in the shadows,/ preparing to give themselves away.' Very sad; very good poetry."

Kit Wright

I

The postcard you sent
of a woman alone, her cup of coffee
untouched;
on the back you wrote:
'How serene she looks'
and wished you could feel like that.

Now there is all the time in the world
before we meet
on a railway platform
like this one
where I will endure the tracks
that join together,
and separate,
the places between us.

(from Angel Visits)