pieces : k.t.publications £5.50
Also, courtesy of BeWrite Books, this collection is also available as a downloadable ebook the complete pieces for £1.00 only click here
'...one of the best books to have appeared in [the] UK so far this century...’ Fire #19 ‘
...a captivating exploration of love, grief, and especially hope in a prisoner of war camp... But Pieces is also about violence, and therein lies something fascinating and even beautiful ... The lines are musical, lulling ... creates an enchanted, awful place where people are dying, where we don’t want them to stop dying, so we can keep reading...’ Donna Biffar: Orbis #121 ‘ ...The descriptive density and personal revelation of the experience give these ‘pieces’ poetic weight .... Smith has a winning style...’ The Black Mountain Review #6
'...Smith's language has an abstract and untethered feel, but his descriptions of the natural cycle of life continuing beyond and without reference to the prisoners are compellingly precise...' L. Kiew NHI Online Review '
...prose-poetry items which stand alone, or as a landscape of observations... This is a new approach; you need to read it yourself.' Geoff Stevens Purple Patch
Problems & Polemics: boho/bluechrome press £7.99 www.bohopress.co.uk "Voices echo throughout this collection, not only the voices of the schizophrenic, the bipolar, the possessed and the dispossessed but also the many voices of the poet which are often locked in contradiction and conflict. Contradictions that make Sam Smith's honest and humane observations, at times, almost too painful to read... ...Don't throw away the key that Smith offers you in this brilliant and humbling anthology, for he offers you a key to an insight that few can offer us. If Shlovsky would have it that the work of the artist is to make the stone stonier then Smith asks you to consider the possibility that to label people as insane is perhaps the most insane thing that Society ever does. Few books, anthologies, poems leave you with the feeling that you have gained a privileged insight, Problems & Polemics however is one of those anthologies..." Alan Corkish: Neon Highway
"The big question hanging over this collection appears to be summarised in the poem 'What is Social, What Mental Illness?' and the lines are blurred with much manipulation and co-morbidity.... It's rare that I enjoy more than a third of any collection (and this goes for the "greats" as much as any other work) but I have to say that with this work, I was gripped from cover to cover, despite the uncomfortable subject matter and if you are going to invest ٥.99 in poetry this year, I would recommend that this book be the one that finds itself on your bookshelf as the price doesn't remotely reach the value of the text." Paula Brown: People's Poetry
"... brings together the threads of the psychiatric system, only to pull them apart again. Everyone is potentially vulnerable; everyone is potential victim or antagonist... These poems are full with disenchantment and irony concerning the paradox of care. And whilst Smith seems a polemicist he leaves us with no answers and no final judgement but for the evident fact that these systems are not working... I would highly recommend this compilation of poems to anyone who wants to unpick these problems as well as to those who appreciate proficiently crafted poetry." Jo Whittle: Mind Ground
An Atheist’s Alphabetical Approach to Death
erbacce press http://www.erbacce-press.com/
This chapbook is a result of 'An Atheist's Alphabetical Approach to Death' ending up in the final 4 (out of 1,200 entries) of the Erbacce 2009 Competition.
‘....irreverent, intelligent, provocative and unpretentious he provokes me to smile, to debate and to appreciate his stubborn honesty.... words for Smith are a functional yet beautiful vehicle, sort of Rolls Royce convertibles with ladders and bags of cement strapped across the gold-plated body work....’ Alan Corkish
ISBN 978-1-906588-51-9 £4.00
Dark Tales (£3.50) is a self-published chapbook of poems, with paintings by Shelley C Smith, the poems written to be performed at the Nunney Jazz Cafe '....This is Stephen King in verse form....' Helena Nelson: Sphinx
'....this, of course, is precisely where poetry must take its readers — to the brink....' Patricia Prime: NHI Online Review
canoe: an erbacce press chapbook £4.00 http://www.erbacce-press.com/
"As a collection it links a cohesive storyline: the rain - the lure of the circus - the flood - the elephant. Each poem is a drop into waters that run deep. / An unassuming treasure. A bargain. Recommended." Carol Thistlethwaite: Carillon Magazine
John the Explorer: Gecko Press £6.00 with drawings by Shelley C Smith To view pages from this collection click here
'...told in relentless, muscular language... Sam Smith has not written an easy book, but it's unusual and one that contains some fine writing.' Michael Bangerter: NHI
'...gathers together elements of a contemplation... the protagonist... goes on a series of meanderings... all 'making strange' the everyday. The writing is complimented by line drawings by Shelley C Smith which mirror the intriguing, often disturbing, text. Although the earthy is apparent here... it is presented with such graphic dexterity that because it is so intimate its crudity is readily forgivable... Smith presents ideas and images, symbols and lyrical tropes in ways which many other contemporary poets could benefit from considering.' Niall McGrath: Poetry Quarterly Review
' Don't be put off by past encounter with Berryman, Smith is much better with his single-name character. John has to explore, taste ivy berries once, face the elements, encounter animals, encounter encounters. John is a middle-aged baby that needs to find the world... Well illustrated by Shelley C Smith.' Geoff Stevens: Purple Patch
Skin&Bones: Odyssey Press £6.00 with illustrations by Lynn Sutterby
"...He is a distinctive and important poet, ever sensitive to, even obsessed by, the fluidity and transience of surfaces: impressed yet shocked by the dead weight and rigidity of solid centres. His poetry evokes a cosmos structured through those elements... Sam Smith is a keen and accurate observer of the particulars of nature... The engravings, themselves made on wood, which is one of the poet's prime integuments, are not mimetic of his imagery; but are embodiments in form and design of perceptions which seem to rise from the deep subconscious; whereas the poet's images are the impress on a heightened consciousness of a close observation and appreciation of nature's structural materials. Thus, there is a true complementarity between word and art..." K V Bailey: Zene #14
"Sam Smith is a poet who uses imagery, more than other poetic techniques, to good effect and uses it... to illuminate the harsh, livid beauty of places where humanity literally scratches the earth to live. Other poems are mental landscapes of equal harshness but they are not barren of emotion. The poems are well amplified by Lyn Sutterby's woodcuts reminiscent of Eskimo and other native carvings on slivers of whalebone and wood.... These poems are mirrors in which some readers will not like the reflected truth of what we really are by instinct... Sam Smith is a much more interesting social poet than many others in this respect..." Martin Holroyd: Poetry Monthly #20
text by Sam Smith with photos by Neil Carter & Gemma Dart
"...a most attractively produced book of poems and prose... interleaved with fine and original photographs by Gemma Dart and Neil Carter... text and the photographs together successfully "...create a sense of place and time", the place being North Devon, round Ilfracombe. Those who like Clare's poetry will find much to enjoy in this high quality work." Peter Cox: The John Clare Society Newsletter #83 "...unassailable talent..." North Devon Journal
recordings of poems from 'apostrophe combe' can be accessed via the 'Response to Landscape' website - http://www.audioscapes.org/
