Love and Other Fairy Tales by Adam Horovitz (Indigo Dreams Publishing)

Adam Horovitz once told me he could hear music in the poetry of chemical words and terms. Well, his words in this collection sing to me. The love-themed poems are sometimes personal and sometimes grand in scale. Here are excerpts from some of my favourites below.

‘The Singing Street’ transported me to a childhood memory in Sunderland:

I knock again.

Are you in pain? I ask, and Can I help?

The duet become opera and I retreat,

hot faced and frightened, to the singing street.

‘Experiment’ really spoke to my love of science. This poem reminded me of certain feelings that I have experienced. Here is the opening verse:

Here is my hand. If I reach out

and let the nerves beneath my fingers’ skin

shiver in sympathy with yours

I believe that my head will electrify itself,

split apart from the atom of my lips,

create a fiery, autonomic smile.

I love the innovative use of language in one poem’s reference to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. ‘Thisbë the verse’ features this enchanting final stanza:

HIM

The phone roars like a hungry lion,

drowns out reason. Was that a voice

through the letterbox? I am too tired for words.

My mouth is dry and all the graves I’ve ever known

Are gaping at me in an imitation of a kiss

‘Love like pollen’ is an example that includes nature-themed imagery. This poem reminds me that there is so much beauty all around us. Here is the first verse:

Love like pollen

first a fine dust of it

smearing the summer air

then, sticky and heavy

on the backs of bees

the high priests of flower marriages

travelling from bloom to gaping bloom

Love & Other Fairy Tales is a wonderful Indigo Dreams collection that I highly recommend. Adam’s unique style immersed me into places where my head became filled with romance, questions surrounding faith, nature, and the mythical. This book would be a welcome Christmas present.

Stephen Paul Wren 14^th December 2021