The Butcher's Hands

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Catherine Smith writes narratives of alienation, engaging with dream, nightmare and the surreal, peopled by characters at the edge and sometimes beyond the edge. Intense and even at times grotesque (the pages are littered with obsessives, a vampire, the ghost of a jealous wife, ‘Charades’ with an s & m subtext) her poetry is always convincingly well-observed, imaginative and ultimately lifeaffirming. The Butcher’s Hands shows a coherence and sureness of purpose. The cumulative effect is disturbing, full of black humour permeated with images of loss.