As an English Literature student, I tend to try and pick out themes within bodies of written work. In terms of Katherine Stansfield and her collection: Playing House, the only theme that I can think of that truly captures her poetic focus is ‘life’. Life in all its weird and wonderful glory.

Her poems explore everyday things like eating biscuits, serving tea, looking after cats and sitting on the tube. Whilst these might sound like rather menial topics, you will find yourself smiling in recognition of these moments and marvelling at how notable, even poetic, the everyday can truly be.

I think my favourite poem of the collection was ‘Relic’. It addresses a news report about the auctioning of John Lennon’s tooth. Stansfield takes this snippet of unusual news, already interesting in itself, and creates a poem full of surprising yet captivating imagery:

‘After fifty years it looks
like forgotten popcorn
or a knot of Wrigley’s
chewed past stretch.’

Stansfield’s imagination, in terms of both language and poetic content, is what truly makes her poetry. For example, she envisages someone planting Lennon’s tooth or someone putting it in their ear to hear

‘the long dead croon:

love love me do.’

(The above line made for a great ending. I turned over the corner of this poem just to experience those closing words again.)

Reading Stansfield’s poetry often surprised me. The normal and everyday became unexpected, unusual and gripping. A night out became a night of eating the moon, ‘ buoyed by the waves/ a cake on a tray’. See the poem: ‘I decided to have a night out’. Afternoon became an adventure on the sea, ‘hoisting the curtains as sails’ and taking ‘custard creams’ along for the ride. See the poem: ‘How I know I need a biscuit in the afternoon’. Finally, pandas became creatures of make believe. No quotation needed here, just read the title: ‘There’s no such thing as pandas’.

So if you have cats, like biscuits or crisps, ride the tube or the train, watch fireworks, hate working in a café or watch David Attenborough’s nature programmes on the BBC (yes there’s a poem for that too), then have a read of this collection and discover just how interesting and book-worthy these things can be.

On another note: The cover design of this collection (a collage-esque scene of a tea party) is, by far, the most interesting anthology cover I’ve seen in a while. (Thank you Heather Landis).