Jen Hadfield – Byssus

Great to see this honest, pulls no punches critic loves Jen Hadfield! She’s the real thing alright!

Dave Poems.

Statement of Prejudice : Hadfield’s last book Nigh-No-Place came along at a time when I was doing a lot of entry-level thinking about poetry, and remains a pretty important book to me. Have seen her read a couple of times, she reads very slowly and deliberately, emphasising the poems’ aural qualities.

Review: Byssus is an odd, highly readable, lexically pleasurable book. The poems paint Shetland as populated primarily by its flora and fauna, and the human characters as somewhat embattled wildlife. Hadfield’s wry, affectionate humour animates many of the individual pieces, and is a personable and imaginative guide through what in many hands could be a prompt for heavyhanded existentialism. If Hadfield has a poetic tick it’s finding a scrap of fairytale or an imaginative hook in the minutiae of day to day life, although – far more than Nigh-No-Place – Byssus acknowledges and registers the underlying precariousness of…

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