The bard celebrates two other fine practitioners of the art, and laments a lost brewer
LIVING up to this book’s title, poet and boxing aficionado Chip Hamer comes out fighting from the first bell, landing a few blows on the “real poets” who “don’t wear Harringtons, Ben Sherman button downs or step out in proper daisies.”
Hamer is not just about style but about substance and depth, which is why the literati are taken to task in opener Death of a Pie’n’Mash Shop, while the next, A Class Act, is a knock-out punch which provides the title of this collection of poems.
Two inspring books — that’s your New Year’s musing from me on January 2 2026
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
Gin Lane by William Hogarth is a critique of 18th-century London’s growing funeral trade, posits DAN O’BRIEN
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer


