NEW FAMOUS PHRASES
by Daniel Hinds

"‘New Famous Phrases’ by Daniel Hinds is an enthralling, vivid collection of poems that explore themes of mythology and nature, replete with intertextual references and dedications to classical poets and writers." 

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Hinds opens the collection with ‘The Pact of Water,’ a beautiful piece about humanity’s relationship to the ocean. Hinds draws on the myth of Atlantis or Meropis to punctuate his message about the distance between us and nature, building a semantic field of worship (such as ‘gods’, ‘libation’) to highlight this further. Every lexical choice in Hinds’ poetry holds an incredible amount of power – not a single word is wasted to shape his message, and his style is encapsulated perfectly through this introductory poem, with the violent yet enrapturing images of the sea capturing his compelling descriptive abilities, setting the tone for his entire collection.

 

A personal favourite poem of mine is ‘Ode to a Magpie.’ This is a piece inspired by Keats’ famous work ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and challenges Keats’ admiration for the bird’s beauty and song by defending his own reverence for the magpie, lesser-known for its beauty but rather its character. Hinds explores religious anecdotes, situating the magpie in stories such as Noah’s ark. This gives magpies an intimate quality, particularly through the line ‘you alone stayed, / and strayed / to see the world drown,’ which attributes the human-like quality of grief to the magpie, something not explored in the original story. A highlight-worthy line from the piece is ‘when all the other blackbirds were put in a pie, you stole the silverware.’ This creates such a lifelike, reverential image of the magpie, celebrating its negative reputation rather than refuting it.

 

Another poem I have to mention is ‘Prose/Poem,’ a genius merger of the two literary forms, which acknowledges such throughout the work, flowing from comparison to comparison. Hinds explores various ways the poem and prose combination could be described, for example ‘this is a drink that goes down the wrong way, and the right,’ or ‘one page’s words, printed over two.’ It’s a deeply powerful piece exploring our perception of art, and ends in the compelling phrase ‘Write your future with both hands.’ This work read fluidly and unrestrained, and had a profound humanity about it; searching for all the ways a particular experience can be explained.

 

All of Hind’s poems in ‘New Famous Phrases’ are absolutely breathtaking. He has a unique talent for giving every word its own power within a piece by making use of sophisticated and descriptive vocabulary, creating unforgettable and vivid images. A must-read on all accounts.

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Review by: I Rose

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Get it:

NEW FAMOUS PHRASES

Broken Sleep Books

ISBN:  978-1-916938-83-0
Broken Sleep Books website

£12.99

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