Review of Trotter's All This Could Be Yours on the Rover

Abbey Paige from the Rover has some enthusiastic praise for Trotter's All This Could Be Yours...

Some poetry is on a strict diet: spare and controlled; not-saying and half-saying; healthy silences leaving lots of white space on the page like the white space on an empty plate. It can all leave a reader feeling hungry, and sometimes that’s how the reader wants to be left. But when in the mood for a juicy, greasy, unctuous, metaphorically caloric poetic experience, this reviewer recommends Joshua Trotter’s debut collection, All This Could Be Yours.

Crowded with sound and cluttered with allusions, Trotter’s poems are studies in abundance. They work on the same intimate and playful level as nursery rhymes, drawing the reader in with clever wordplay and creating a musicality so irresistible, meaning insinuates itself like a subtle flavour. What results is a bewitching combination of familiar pleasure and strange surprise — plenty for the brain to chew on.

To describe the book as a poetic binge is not to suggest that Trotter is just hot-dogging. While his colourful language packs the poems like a Chinese buffet, he often turns to traditional recipes when it comes to form (the sonnet in particular), rendering them with loving flare. Much contemporary poetry written in form can feel stiff, but Trotter is able to employ form so naturally that it melts into the poem, providing structure without drawing attention to itself.

Read the rest of the review here.