The Unknown Civilian by Antony Owen Ciaran Berry ‘Virginia Astley's collection in celebration

‘Virginia Astley's collection in celebration of the Thames is a wonderfully attentive and full-hearted response to both the river and the landscapes it winds through

His logo-philia evinces a fascination not merely with language but with the workings of the human mind

capturing all these elements variously throughout his masterwork

diaries and the conversation books he used when deaf

and his last two collections were Poetry Book Society Recommendations

The Unknown Civilian by Antony Owen Ciaran Berry ‘Virginia Astley's collection in celebrationThere is no doubting the profound intent and varied ambition of this collection. Caught in the withering and implacable gaze of war, Owen refuses to flinch. Like a surgeon intent on the truer cause, he peels away wars more overt skin to expose, with a disarming unsentimentally, some of the less obvious aspects of conflicts anatomy. Mario Petrucci Feathers and scalpels, I thought, reading this collection on the train between Lancashire meetings about