![[Your basket]](images/basket_small.gif "Your basket"){kind=small}
Your basket
Armature
by Chrissie Gittins
Chrissie Gittins is well-known as a children's writer, but this is her first full-length poetry collection for adults. It is a delightful and thoughtful book, the settings and subjects of her poems ranging from the intimate and domestic to the world of international politics. Helen Dunmore describes her work as having "a great sense of humour, an ear for what life sounds like...", while Moniza Alvi talks of the poet as inhabiting "a world of Chinese delicacy".
...enough surprises to keep me reading to the end. ... characterises her speakers through disjunctive, seemingly random pronouncements that manage to betray their vulnerability, longing and frustration — she has a genuine gift.
...the poems are marked by a variety of location and mood. The description of place, particularly landscapes, is vivid and sensual, while the warmth of some of the imagery in some poems is punctuated by sudden and surprising violence or explicitly sexual imagery...varied in mood and emphasis.
...honest, unpretentious, no garnish. I'm impressed with the simplicity of the poems... they are exact, precise, they don't pussy-foot around or beat about the bush. They remain focussed and succinct... extremely refreshing because it is so surprisingly rare.
There is no straining for effect, but much to enjoy and admire in this fresh and unusually natural first collection.
... these poems are exceptional... visual, aural, emotional and sparse.
Paperback
84 pages
ISBN 1 900072 70 X
Published September 2003
