Capsule Review and Poem: over under fed, by Amy Marguerite

In over under fed, Amy Marguerite achieves a kind of unromantic romanticism; guiding us through love, loss and healing in kebab shops and cemeteries, badminton courts and hospital beds. Her style is engagingly contemporary, mixing directness with striking imagery. In 'trust at 33,000 feet' the sky is 'a hot artery on dry ice', while in 'mount street cemetery' Marguerite sees herself 'a corridor / for the reunion / of joints'.

The collection feels deeply personal, largely exploring the writer’s experiences with an eating disorder — a topic not often encountered in poetry. One of the most powerful poems is 'discharge notes (ii)', featuring a beginning and end that have stuck in my mind, along with other painful truths ('gratefulness is sore you can’t / ever expect anyone to feel how they have made you / feel especially if they’ve never almost / been dead'). 

Marguerite’s craft is best displayed in her shorter, tauter poems like 'far too blue' and 'i was hungry'. Some say poetry is a way to speak what can’t be spoken any other way. 

In 'i was hungry', it’s as though Marguerite had to invent a whole new vocabulary for what she had tell herself: 'o heathenry pinfeather / uncreated creature / just eat.'

measuring (in)sincerity

if every prayer is a plea why am i still waiting to be realised? i have mastered the ritual. i should be seriously remarkable by now. but all my gods are goal posts ghosts good health cannot move through. i am the reason ironing boards have covers as useless as the hail  mary after skipping a meal.  i am a miracle               offcut. i am a doctrine-hooded             heretic. a whole bunch of us were expecting a difference between sent up and give up by now.     what is disappointment  if not       a huge                       relief.