miming happiness

* inpress book of the month *

"Allison McVety's Miming Happiness (Smith/Doorstop): this month's top seller, and the second collection from a poet whose debut, The Night Trotsky Came To Stay, was nominated for a Forward Prize in 2007. Lauded by the Poetry Book Society as "a paean to the everyday, managing at once to capture the banality and magic of school days, moving house, working life and family". Striking works for fans and newcomers alike."
Inpress Books

"Allison McVety’s follow up to 2007’s The Night Trotsky Came to Stay is a paean to the everyday, managing at once to capture the banality and magic of school days (‘Extra Curricula’), moving house (‘Two Mugs’), working life (‘Head Count’) and family (‘Offspring’). What is most striking about this collection is the efficiency of the language used – Occam’s razor has been applied effectively here, and the wonderfully stark images conjured up by such terse lines as “we freeze, together and separate, verticals;” (from Family Trees) tell of a poet at the height of her powers."
Poetry Book Society

"Let Allison McVety be your guide through the industrial landscape of the last century for hers is a voice that is deft, measured and unfaltering in the face of ‘liquid history’, yet always with an eye for the human: the train drivers, button keepers and those on the night shift. Here is a poet who excels at making long-gone everyday objects like ration books at once endearing and remarkable. An exhilarating follow-up to her outstanding collection, The Night Trotsky Came to Stay. So clear is her voice that we can hear ‘a pin drop from a milliner’s grip some ninety years/away’."
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch