Peephole Extravaganza

Simon French's third collection offers its readers a feast of original and sometimes startling imagery in poems ranging from the tenderly insightful to the boldly erotic; poems which allow privileged insights into so many different lives. His pages are densely populated with losers and gainers, lovers and predators: a defiant eighty-four-year-old on skis for the first time, 'not wanting death to pick the cottage lock'; a homeless man surviving cold nights by sleeping at the base of a crematorium chimney; even a wind-turbine is brought convincingly to life. Those familiar with Simon's earlier work will again encounter the same energy and apparently endless inventiveness which contribute to his unique style - from the 'Great Tombola in the Sky' which opens the book, to the gentle surprise of the final poem. A 'Peephole Extravaganza' indeed.