Child in the Growing Old

‘More superb poetry from Donna Campbell. Looking for Mae West pulses with life. Her focus ranges from rural hardship to disappointments in love, from sensual exhortations to fierce castigation. This is what we expect from her now, after her wonderful first collection, Mongrel - in every word you see Donna’s smile, hear her confident assertion.

The thing about Donna Campbell is: she a truth-teller, as much about herself as other people. Her poems are always forceful but never brutal – it’s a good trick that, even when she’s telling brutal things.'

(Charlie Gracie, writer)

There can be no doubt that Karen Macfarlane is a special talent. In All About the Surface, her closely observed, resonant poems convey the richness of the moments she explores. Whether it is open water swimming, walking a ridge, or running down the hill at Clachtoll, Macfarlane’s impressive command of her craft transports the reader into her world to live those experiences with her, to share their pleasures, to encounter their challenges and to be the wiser for having done so.

(Nigel Kent, poet and reviewer)