Review: 'Invisible Fractures' by Catherine Helier

The majority of the poems in this collection deal with the emotional inner-scape of the poet; her doubts, fears and frustrations, her tense and often pain-filled relationships with the poems' unnamed others. Not that it's all doom and gloom - poems such as 'Patience' and 'My Puzzle Piece' offer snatches of optimism, even if this is largely bittersweet ('feeling pain makes me realise its real').

The poet here eschews obliqueness or over-elaborate metaphor in favour of a simplistic style suggestive of everyday thought patterns, of an individual's musings clipped clean into direct utterance. Symbols, when used, are simple, their meaning openly proffered - the sand in 'Fading Away,' the anaesthetising water in 'Comfortably Numb' - the poet intentionally shunning complexity in favour of the power of simple statement.

Despite the linguistic calm 'Invisible Fractures' crackles with a dark, glowering energy. Sensibly priced and well formatted, this is definitely worth a look.