A new review of 'Lost at Sea'

'Lost at Sea', my poetry pamphlet about my great-grandfather and his family on Shetland, has just been reviewed by Nadia Kingsley of Fair Acre Press. 

Lost at Sea

poems by Jean Atkin, design by Hugh Bryden.

Published by Roncadora Press.  ISBN : 978-0-9535804-6-0

Lost at Sea is a beautiful handmade poetry pamphlet. From the start there is mystery here as no explanation, no introduction eases the reader in. However, the card pages can be folded out into one continual landscape of printed image that shows us we are in a place of islands; a place dominated by sea - a sea that is deep and bleak and is made up of creases reminiscent of skin and cotton held together by dream.

The words of the twelve poems float over this cold ocean. Each poem draws the reader deeper in. Will the reader drown like other “surnames lost at sea” or will they, like I, come out of this experience stronger and more alive, and with a greater affinity for men like Thomas Gilbert Hunter Aiken?

                     That sometimes he ate

                     ships biscuits so maggoty they

                     shuffled across his plate…

                     That in Valparaiso he

                     punched a man and knocked him

                     overboard and then jumped in and saved him…

                    That he lived to see his sons survive the War

                    and held his grandchildren, as babies…

Lost at Sea is more than a poetry pamphlet. It is the way forward - in a climate of e-books and shrinking opportunities, it stands strong as a collaborative piece of art that can be returned to again and again.

Nadia Kingsley
Fair Acre Press http://www.fairacrepress.co.uk/
2011