Kink and Particle

The poems of Tiffany Atkinson’s debut collection, Kink and Particle, offer us multiple perspectives, including those of a woman on the brink of 30. This crucial birthday is a milestone from which the speaker looks back to childhood experiences, to the more indulgent pleasures of the 20s and then onwards to a mysterious but much-anticipated future. The poet’s style is often an apparently casual, almost ‘throwaway’ vernacular that nevertheless has been formulated with great care. The effect is of intimacy, as if in a letter from a friend, and offers an immediacy, a diary-like quality of authenticity. The author’s eye for quirky detail, observed, recalled and imagined, is especially striking. Her eye and ear for Aberystwyth, the somewhat eccentric coastal university town where she lives, is also entertainingly apt. Her style lends itself particularly well to love poems, several of which are included in Kink and Particle.