How Things Are On Thursday

The poems in Ros Barber’s debut collection demonstrate her skill in isolating the extraordinary within the commonplace, conveying universal emotions with unusual directness and resonance. In so doing, she looks set to become one of those few poets to appeal to the general reader and achieve an audience beyond the limited confines of the poetry circuit. Striking as a performer of her own poems, Barber is also a writer of rare ability in transferring her voice – and often the voices of others – to the page, without losing any subtlety of inflection. The intricacies of human feeling are adroitly evoked in narratives arranged with formal dexterity, from tight, highly charged sonnets to more extended pieces such as the title sequence. Throughout, a leavening of dark humour provides a counterbalance to the bittersweet tone that pervades many of the poems.