NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Each year, Huddersfield based The Poetry Business hold a Book & Pamphlet Competition. First round winners have a pamphlet of their work published by Smith/Doorstop Books; the overall winner, having submitted additional poems, has published a book length collection.

EXTRA MATHS is a pamphlet of 20 poems and a first stage winner in the 2004 competition. Beautifully produced, in a striking orange cover, EXTRA MATHS represents everything that a good compilation should be — interesting and entertaining, having an individual take on life and with every poem making a significant contribution.

This group of poems work so well that I am surprised that The Poetry Business did not offer Hilary Menos the opportunity to publish a book-sized collection.

Drawing upon her personal life, Menos has produced poetry covering an extraordinarily wide range of subject matter. Here you can find recollections of childhood (EXTRA MATHS, the title poem) and a visit to a remarkable, if moth-eaten circus (CIRQUE TZIGANE ), rubbing shoulders with pornographic film (ONE TRICK PONY) and a visit to a slaughterhouse (JUDGEMENT).

Menos is skilled at uncovering the unusual — at looking at life with a sideways glance. In NEIGHBOURS, a poem that begins with a conventional description of a rural scene:

	Stonechats chip and bounce above the hedge,
	and swifts surf the breeze

		Down a potholed track, old man Tucker
	hawks and spits at crows. His bungalow lurks
	by the barn

	When the wind is right we hear Mike shooting rats
	and Kate screaming, Stop, then just screaming.
	She won't last long. There's a witch at Druid's Cross —
	we keep our kids inside on ancient days.

	I knew him by his hair, more Gabriel
	than Gabriel himself. And how the sparks flew.
	We went to it like wayward souls

	loose and strange, I deal in never,
	but dream of an angel's rub and rush of feathers.