Frame by Helen Laycock

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Review by A.R. Williams

American writer Katherine Anne Porter once stated that “human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give some kind of shape and meaning” (my emphasis). Helen Laycock’s poetry collection Frame does exactly this by bringing together poems that explore both the brokenness and beauty of human experience.

With an accessible, personal, and lyrical voice, Laycock’s poems outline how one knows, processes, and confronts hardship, ambiguity, anxiety, along with a myriad of other realities. As such, the collection expresses a varied mood—some poems express nostalgia, while others are sharp, crushing, and even overwhelming. But the diverse perspectives are held as one with a consistent style of language, use of imagery, and focus on “the broken”. Frame is a superb volume of poetry and is worthy of wide engagement. I warmly recommend it.

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Helen Laycock’s writing has been showcased at Reflex Fiction, the Ekphrastic Review, the Cabinet of Heed, Visual Verse, Paragraph Planet, Serious Flash Fiction, Flash Flood, Popshot, Lucent Dreaming (whose inaugural flash competition she won), Full Moon and Foxglove, The Caterpillar, the Best of CaféLit, From One Line, and Poems for Grenfell. She is currently compiling a series of themed poetry collections and a second volume of microfiction. She also writes children’s fiction.