Maltese poet and teacher Abigail Ardelle Zammit recently reviewed Return by Minor Road for London Grip.

Her thoughtful and sensitive take on the subject and the collection moved me a great deal.

In February’s reviews round-up, London Grip published Abigail Ardelle Zammit’s thoughts on my latest collection ‘Return by Minor Road’.

London Grip describes itself as ‘an independent online venue, a cultural omnibus providing intelligent reviews of current shows, events and books, well-argued articles on the widest range of topics, an exhibition space for cross-media arts and an in-house poetry magazine.’

In her review, Abigail Ardelle Zammit comments:

“Heidi Williamson’s third collection is… a sensitive and subtle reflection on the culverts and rivers within the human body that carry the past.

Through a lexicon that is coloured by Scottish inflections (‘thrawn’, ‘cairn’, ‘drookit’), terse versification intensified by assonantal and consonantal patterning, and a sense of place etched through the vocabulary of return…Williamson weaves her delicate sonata of loss, upheaval and natural resilience….

The collection’s secret is the gentle metaphor – not the sensational collocative term, but the knowing that comes gradually to light.

[F]ound poems and white space [express] the shock and dismay of that moment in time when everything changes and even language fails.

By the third and final section, we know that place is not simply a geographical territory that humans inhabit, but that momentous events which occur there become part of our DNA.”