'From long narrative lines to fine-boned, lyrical loops and ties that bind these poems into place, Richard James Allen has taken risks with language that mark this as his most adventurous and significant book to date. --Anthony Lawrence
'Allen's subject is being itself, and the way our biological and mental dimensions interact, with human intelligence and love being the unifying forces for this interaction. --Adam Aitken' (Publication summary)
'At first, The short story of you and I by Richard James Allen seems to exist in the liminal space between awake and asleep; the space where your psyche turns the familiar sound and scene around you into something altogether unfamiliar; the space where love and death coexist in the same ghostly breath.' (Introduction)
'Richard James Allen has always been a generous poet, never miserly with his words and wisdom, so it is fitting that The Short Story of You and I is dedicated, quite simply, “for you.” Most of the poems are written in the first or second person. An abiding sense of inclusivity is achieved and so the poetry is a delight to read in a time that seems so divisive: an era of insta-hate and antisocial media, refugees banished to remote islands, and walls erected. An antidote is offered in Allen’s work – although the reader should be warned that this draught may really be a sleeping potion.' (Introduction)
'I always get the sense after reading his poetry that Richard James Allen must thrive on human connection. In this latest anthology, a poem could be short as the line of a single sentence (excluding the title for it) or long and potentially unwieldy, filling 17 pages with concepts and riffs far more complex, yet entreating the listener/reader to persist with the seemingly one-sided conversation. I last reviewed Allen’s Fixing the Broken Nightingale (2014) and, upon embarking the reading of this new collection, I was reminded repeatedly about what I enjoy and value in his writing – an ever-deepening gift and capacity to bring together words, phrases, pauses, gaps, alignments, mal-alignments and punctuations that trigger our senses, our memories, our consciences and our consciousness with things we know (which we had forgotten) and things we didn’t know that could be known.' (Introduction)
