“The gorgeous sounds [in the title poem] undercut an elemental and latent energy within a movement that is continual and deepening…It is a poem as a blessing or prayer that is intended to be spoken aloud….[These poems] delineate a powerful sacramental vision of the world and humanity…The final poem..”Water’ takes us to the heart of the sacrament…It is an appropriate ending to a powerfully sustained collection.”
David Caddy, Tears in the Fence
“Elizabeth Cook’s poems in Bowl, enveloped within a delicate diction, insinuate themselves through a reverence for the elemental and those vessels that hold memory. They are substantial…and yet light, alert to measurement and revelation.”
The Use of English
“There is an apprehension of violence and danger in the poems…The short lyrical poems…float and sting…Elizabeth Cook is… something to be reckoned with.”
George Szirtes, Poetry London
“Just a glance at the opening few poems of this collection show [Cook] able to reflect on the world with the precision and intelligence of the philosopher’s eye. The wonderful opening poem ‘Bowl’ seems born out of nothing as it takes us on a journey through the object’s individual and universal nature, acting as both a hymn in praise of objects and a meditation on the complex way they inhabit the universe…images are being constantly transformed as we see her paying tribute to the delicacy of nature’s movements (as bees hold back from disturbing the universe)…Her well-chosen economic language allows her to interweave the individual with the universal.”
The North