Swords by James Roome Richard Meier 'Anatomy of a Breakdown' confirms

'Anatomy of a Breakdown' confirms Dunkerley as a poet who is profoundly poignant

an effect lightly presaged in the prologue which is a slender poem with barely any lines or words

Absence is a recurrent bassline underscoring Atta’s narratives

these poems pull on the 'tidy hem' of responsible existence

as with the best of sombre narratives

Swords by James Roome Richard Meier 'Anatomy of a Breakdown' confirmsA woman sits alone in an office waiting room. She inhales, deeply. She can smell herself. So begins a surrealist odyssey that takes in blue mountains and giant duvets, prosthetic limbs and oranges, cannibalism and active wear, before ending in a gym. Swords is a narrative about the absurdity of rationality, the attempt to impose order on chaos, the gradual decay of selfhood in a world without MEANING. But, mostly, it is the story of a gradual stumble