book reviews

>>> But This Time the Spout Shot up Red (Death of Workers, 2026)

But This Time the Spout Shot up Red is astonishing and informative and gross and weirdly sincere. As though William Burroughs, Melville’s Ishmael and Susan Sontag travelled together to Antarctica to report on climate change: Sam Wilson Fletcher mixes voices and genres to create a very personal document about the history of a future catastrophe.

Joshua Kotin, author of Utopias of One (Princeton University Press, 2017)

‘The book turns out to be not so much about the trip itself; rather what has motivated people to travel to Antarctica over the years. It also makes clear that, however appealingly remote Antarctica may appear from most peopleʼs everyday lives, we all exist within a planet-wide web of connections that are constantly transmitting and exchanging… a powerful image of the interconnected ways in which humans exploit, destroy, study and venerate the world we live in.’

Bridget Penney, author of Licorice (Book Works, 2020) in New Cambridge Chapbook Review, Issue 4, Spring 2026

>>> Curse Tablet (Slub Press, April 2023)

CURSE TABLET is fucking great. A strangely lucid abstruse enfilade that seems to take sardonic delight in its own lack of self-assuredness, even impotence, counteracting this latter with a sort of forlorn hope charge into semantic oblivions. A calligraphic sunset reel, reeling with a cursed panegyric to the mourning of one’s own error. Ultimately, though, to put it in more banal terms perhaps, this is a weird interrogation of the process of writing poetically—once again, so like himself, Sam makes a strong case for something he professes (implicitly) at not infrequent intervals to detest.

Owen Brakspear, author of Water Year (Erotoplasty Editions, 2023)

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Jay Drinkall

In CURSE TABLET Sam Wilson Fletcher has pulled together a strange floating historiography of the curse as writing (and back again), run up through rabid-fire Bildungsroman. Figures of the Imperial Roman army, sacred canticles, Sam’s own spit (x4) and geological detritus bind in a weaved code that owes more to Hieronymous Bosch than British Poetry Revival. CURSE TABLET twists on the profundity of the terrifying, the evil and the questionable—as he says: ‘Curse tablets do cause people to die.’

Cole Denyer, author of CC DEATH CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF PERSONNEL DEVELOPMENT (Veer2, 2022)

This lexical lava stream left a permanent mark in my psyche.

Jay Drinkall

This is a big and bold success, man, its ghastly iridescent l-enfilades seeping through the crack on the digital tablet (that horrible modern skeuomorph of an ancient surface for imprecations). ‘Curse Tablet’ indeed! It looks so good. Well done.

Colin Leemarshall, author of Total Spiritual Refection (Earthbound Press, 2020), Nidors (Crater Press, 2018)

Curse Tablet is rich. At quite a few points I had to look stuff up to see what it meant, something I’ve not done in a while. The mobility of the thing both bothered me and impressed me, always shifting, sliding off in a new direction. Held together though by a strong sense of Sam’s voice. More than once he seems to express a dislike for the medium of writing itself. I read it aloud and I read it walking but unlike other texts I found it easier to handle read silently. The ‘squeeze’ passage which I presume is a caving term I loved. Magic.

Shaun Doyle

Just got through Curse on the sofa. Wonderful, cuts the chaff of a lot of stuff I’ve read of late. Active self-address, self-question. Felt like a dog chasing Sam but the dog was saying, ‘I only have three legs you idiot.’ Will get through it again tomorrow but have been back to a few pages already—cream of the crop.

Tim Wolf, author of Participation Medal (Gong Farm, 2022)

Full onslaught hedgerow abyss; integral to early summer explodING corpuscles. The reading of the Tablet. It went well. It was enjoyed. It was experienced in one sitting. As intended. Without remorse. IT IS A GOOD THING.

Jim Clarke, author of Failed States

>>> New Adjacent Possible Empty Niche (Veer2, April 2022):

High-octane. Metaphysical-neurological data torrent, with intimations of disaster. Presentism, immense coexistent information, a rush. Love it.

Kim Charnley, author of Sociopolitical Aesthetics: Art and the Crisis of Neoliberalism (Bloomsbury, 2021)

If there is mentalistic congruence between nuclear magnetic lexicography, muddy shoes obvious at tangent perpended, in acoustic resiled to followed bended hints, then here outfolded quantum theodicy is pioneered as neurological plasticity of thought, human body-syntax at life span self installed minded mirror dazzled too.

J.H. Prynne

>>> Gruff Crops (Earthbound Poetry Series, August 2021):

I like his wordstream lots. Sam Wilson Fletcher rewrites English like noone since William Burroughs. Dive into the vortex of the language!

Ben Watson, author of Frank Zappa: Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play and Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation