Transitory

Transitory … is an apt title for this collection, as it is replete with poems which shift, surprise and develop as you read, as life does. It is divided into five sections, the first three focus on situations of Engagement and Dialogue: Social Realities, Hidden and Open Selves, Selves and Others. Written in free verse, the poems brim with a sense of bitter-sweet experience and self-exploration; some are tender; some almost punch you in the face, like Hungry Women. There is honesty and bluntness as social convention is blown apart. CHRISTINE DE LUCA

Anne Pia is a fresh voice among contemporary Scottish poets. The European context in which her imagination works, with poems responding to the work of Baudelaire, for instance, is taken as a given: Scotland and the community of European nations are mediated and represented in her poems with subtle understanding, sympathy and constructive insight, political realities that give “nurture” to “fledglings preparing to fly”. ALAN RIACH

The `small and continuing dialogues in my own life' which Anne Pia presents to us in this deeply felt and sensuous collection widen out to span continents of feeling. They move from `Asian bars on Gothic sidestreets' to the `tendernesses of tea' through landscapes of loss and fulfilment, interrogating every aspect of lived moments in graceful, supple and sharply observed poems. A real pleasure to read. AC Clarke