Toby Martinez de las Rivas, "Floodmeadow" (Faber, 2023)

First published in the Times Literary Supplement, 2nd June 2023

For paid subscribers only, this is a copy of my review of Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Floodmeadow (Faber, 2023), originally published in the TLS:

Toby Martinez de las Rivas’ first two collections, Terror (2014) and Black Sun (2018, both Faber) drew attention for their ambition and visionary power. This third book, Floodmeadow, develops many of the themes and features of the previous ones: readers will recognise trademark birds of prey; insects (especially dragonflies); elemental powers (especially storm and darkness); scriptural form and references; and unusual words, precisely used (from this new collection I learnt ‘spathe’, ‘amelanchier’, ‘pterostigmatae’, ‘infusoria’). Newer elements in Floodmeadow include larger creatures -- horses, dogs, deer – and the hunt, its romance, savagery and ‘emptiness’ (here almost a technical term: three poems are titled ‘Śūnyatā’, a Sanskrit word for nothingness, and four ‘Emptiness of Dogs’).