Sharp Pencil

There is very much the life and death instinct coursing through the arteries and veins of the collected poems found in Sharp Pencil. The idea of Sharp Pencil is that it offers keen observations about life. It has a loose story arc that references the act of drawing. Section headings called Lines, Shade and so on to Last pages, place the reader within a poetic world. Couplets jive with tercets and quatrains. Melancholy heats the memories that are revealed or confessed and a sense of loss and longing caresses the tips of its met- aphors and the warm stomach of its everyday mode of undress. At the same time, Sharp Pencil's nostalgia for the past brightly steps us into the present and calls forth hopefulness and chants out themetres of love. These are settling poems, refusing to let go of the five o'clock shad- ows they fall upon, while drawing back the net cardinal curtains to let the new day in. Sean Redmond, 2021