Reminded of Something

In all of Robin Thomas’s work there is a subtlety and wit so contained that it invites re-reading. It takes full immersion to savour the linguistic dexterity and intelligence at work, to appreciate that humour often belies the absolute seriousness of life. In reminded of something, this balance is particularly delicate and the poignancy superbly controlled and utterly affecting. With a yearning that can only come of love and loss, the poems use the simplest of metaphors in the most lucid language to convey memories and emotions so complex and heart-breaking that they are almost beyond the scope of words-a collection that is profoundly moving and exquisitely realised.Praise for Robin Thomas’s previous workPoems are like rooms. One might feel safe in such a room and, at first sight, the poems of Robin Thomas employ an architecture which is reassuring. [...] Yet walls shake and windows crack and the ’homely’ formal qualities of these well-made poems belie a mystery, a strangeness, a reckoning.- Julian StannardRobin Thomas’s is a fragile world, whose unexpected strengths derive from his elastic, unsentimental grasp of reality. It’s not surprising that I find myself smiling with recognition as I read Robin Thomas’s view of the universe ... after all, ambiguity and contradiction are embedded in comedy of the most serious kind.- Janice DempseyOccasionally I seize upon a single poem sent to me, or discovered by accident, and rejoice in its particular oddness or specialness or combination of the two. Robin Thomas’s poetry evokes this response with its extraordinary quirkiness, combination of wild and everyday wisdom, the way the clues are always in the margins, chuckling as they wait to be found or found out. Thomas is the master of irony and juxtaposition, never obvious, always surprising.- Wendy KleinRobin Thomas completed the MA in Writing Poetry at Kingston University in 2012. He has had poems published in a number of journals including Acuman, Agenda, Envoi, Orbis, Brittle Star, Poetry Salzburg, Poetry Scotland, Pennine Platform, The High Window, South, Stand, Rialto and The Interpreter’s House. He has been shortlisted for the Buzzwords, Bridport and Bath Poetry Café prizes and is represented in several anthologies. His pamphlet, A Fury of Yellow, was published by Eyewear in 2016. His debut collection, Momentary Turmoil, was published in 2018, followed by A Distant Hum in 2021, both by Cinnamon. Dempsey and Windle published his Cafferty pamphlet in 2021 and his collection Weather on the Moon was published by Two Rivers Press in 2022. Robin also had a Flash Fiction Novella-Margot and the Strange Objects-published by Adhoc Publishing in 2022.