the small manoeuvres by Kathy Pimlott

Pimlott is my favourite flâneuse, conjuring place like no one else, with an immaculate eye for the juicy, telling detail. In these clear-sighted poems she confronts aging and lockdowns, both bringing a world: ‘wilder and straitened / like the bins.’ I love Pimlott’s cast of memorable characters; her tinder-dry wit; her hard-won knowledge that: ‘what matters now is grace on a wire, enough sleep.’  Clare Pollard

‘I’ve a little passion to speak of’ says the speaker of ‘What Matters’, an apt description for the tone of the poems in Kathy Pimlott’s collection the small manoeuvres. Women’s lives and labour, motherhood and daughterhood are explored and questioned with a discreet passion, as well as the city, the shifting landscape of central London where Pimlott has lived for many years. Gentrification means ‘Money wants no one to belong’, but time and time again these intriguing, imagistic poems evoke belonging, human connection and pleasure in the smallest moments.’ Hannah Lowe