Love's Labours

Zeeba Ansari's debut collection Love's Labours introduces a poet of remarkable range and purpose. These are singing, transformative poems grounded in reality and the elements. Her voice is richly lyrical, forging language into composures of insight and energy. The poet engages unflinchingly and resourcefully with her material. Whether drawing upon historical or mythical figures, tales from the Mabinogion or from the Silk Route, or from the hard-won landscapes of personal experience, her poems are beautifully wrought, strong and tactile, possessing that essential equipoise which gives a poem its being. She takes us from The World Tree to Kashgar Market, round the world and back again. It is a wondrous journey. These poems breathe and pulse with life. Penelope Shuttle