A Crooked Stile takes a slantwise leap over the everyday, a fencer’s delight in parry and parody. Starting out from an almost out-of-body consideration of being, Jenkins blithely waltzes around the globe, your better-than-Baedeker witty tour guide. At home, she wades into symbolic systems, taking on water, punctuation. zero, family and mortality before briefly tilting her dunce’s cap at the sun, as it sinks into the west.
‘It is easy to highlight the cleverness and linguistic vitality of the collection, but it is also worth stressing the way that Jenkins’s poems can embody profound and moving expression — of love, grief, desire, exuberance, or anxiety, for example — without relinquishing her characteristic wit.’ — Chris Ringrose, on Xn
‘It is one of the most interesting books I have had the pleasure of reading in some time. Every poem is lively with conceptual and emotional play.’ — Billy Colllins, USA, On Fishing in the Devonian
