Hey Fatman

his new collection by Robert Minhinnick is full of the rich, sometimes strange, always telling, detail that we have come to expect from one of Britain's most compelling poets. The book opens with poems set in and around his home country of south Wales, and includes a sequence based on the history of an ancestral house, Dunraven. We then move on to work inspired by the poet's travels in South America and the U.S.A. This includes the title poem 'Hey Fatman', a splendid baroque essay on the characters gathered in a Rio beach bar. Indeed, the whole volume presents us with a series of vivid portraits, before closing with a long poem, 'The Swimming Lesson', an artful immersion in previously unexplored territory.