When Rob Walton went into lockdown, he didn’t know that he would also go into mourning. Here he writes about the life and death of his dad, and how sadness seeped into various aspects of his life. He also manages to find cheap laughs, digs at the government, celebrations of the young and old, unashamed sentimentality and suddenly disarming moments of tenderness. I love these wry, tender poems that are often angry and political but also full of love, and the associated ache and its potential for loss. Walton is a master of musical, looping refrains as he gets closer and closer to the troubled heart of things, during this troubled year of Covid 19 and the death of a much loved father. Deborah Alma (the Emergency Poet) This unusual collection, is, in it’s well-crafted way, a parcel of the sad, funny, unfair and beautiful aspects of ordinary life, where all the flotsam drifts to the surface, as in And In Lockdown, when his girls have gone back to their mum and eating on his own, he finds that ‘…snide Lurpack’ won’t help his spuds – or yours – pass ‘...the lump in your throat.’ Kate Foley Walton does not forget that despite all we are going through; the dread and confusion of Brexit still rises in a dark storm cloud above us. This collection does not aim to solve the unsolvable – none of us know what is to come. We just have to keep on living, loving, and doing the best we can. This is a collection that we can all identify with. ‘Are there any other countries you’d like to break?’ Jane Burn
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