Praise and Poems

Tender, humane and sensual poems which look with frankness at the body in ecstasy, the body in decline, the young body, and the middle-aged body, finding there a real beauty and the possibility of transcendence.   – Andrew McMillan

Robert Hamberger’s signature is the sonnet and the love poem. Love courses through this collection, in poems about the death of his mother, a childhood friend, a colleague. Perhaps it’s these deaths that make Blue Wallpaper so tenderly grateful for every day – watching his husband sleep, remembering an eccentric aunt, watching a pig by a fence. These are poems as vivid and surprising as the lives they celebrate.  – Jackie Wills

Leaving the Party Early

My dead friend said Why not leave
the party early? So, on the stroke
of midnight, before I become a pumpkin
or mouse, without dropping a glass
slipper, I abandon the songs I barely know,
and hear – through open windows higher
than myself – Dancing Queen, where
I’d been a dancing queen ten minutes
ago. The freedom of walking away,
dodging the cars when lights are green.
I eat a kebab, me – a vegetarian
for thirty years – with no-one telling me
not to, thinking I’ll dance for as long
as I choose, and never leave.