Hilary Menos

Lovely review of Human Tissue, The Odds by Emma Simon and Zhou by Nick On by Steve Whitaker in the Yorkshire Times here "...wonderful, far-reaching collection of poems ... (her) wise and finely-rendered descriptive passages reward the reader’s intelligence".

Thrilled to bits to have a couple of new poems — ‘Year of the Moth’ and ‘Autan’ — in issue 33 (April 2020) of The French Literary Review, edited by Barbara Dordi. To buy contact frenchlitreview@icloud.com

A poetry pamphlet is a beautiful endeavour; it is a larger canvas than a single poem, and easier to sustain than a full collection. As a writer, it allows you to approach a thing from all sides, or take one approach and deepen or develop it, experimenting beyond the confines of forty lines without committing yourself to forty poems...

While at Grasmere a couple of weeks ago for the launch of Human Tissue, I sat in on a workshop with Ann and Peter Sansom, and bloody brilliant it was too. They are both excellent teachers, encouraging and liberating, and I appreciated their intense commitment to all things poetry...

We drove up to Grasmere in the Lake District last weekend for the launch of Human Tissue. Drove because we try not to fly. It was a 1600 mile round trip and took three days each way. Enormous thanks to husband and son who endured rain and tarmac and cheap motorway service station baguettes along the way, and all for my fifteen minutes of fame...

As to 'why poetry', I can think of three possible reasons. My mother read me poetry as a child – Walter de la Mare, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas – and made reel-to-reel tapes for me to listen to as I fell asleep. My father spent hours every night drafting and redrafting technical documents, publicity material, minutes of meetings...