Review of Nick Armbrister's poems:

War. The mind of Nick Armbrister is a mind of war. War everyday. Every breath. Every sentence. His work is dark and real. Poetry that is not for pussies. It is verse for those who want the truth about the human mind. The disease, the despair, the carnage filled hell that is life. Armbrister pulls you deeper into his world with every word and you will be changed. He will leave you ready for war even in times of peace. The citizens of London, Manchester England better watch their asses because Nick is on the loose and he doesn't give a shit about writing stuff that is commercial. All he cares about is pain, suffering, crazed humanity, and about getting down in the trenches and pistol-whipping his readers with devastating blows of reality. Reality that this world has lost. But not for long. Read Nick Armbrister and prepare for Armageddon.

---Andrew C. Zinn, author of The Truth Behind The Eyes.

Review By DJ Tyrer

Fade Into Focus,

Focus Into Fade

By Nick Armbrister

l2lpp, sb, iuniverse, ISBN 0-595-41035-9

Order from amazon.com, WH Smiths or Waterstones

Nick Armbrister should be a familiar name to regular readers of our magazines, his poetry having been appearing in them regularly over the last five years. Well, this year marks ten years of being a published poet and he has managed to celebrate in style by getting this collection of his excellent poetry published.

In a way, it is difficult to provide a meaningful review – having published so many of his poems (and I recognise a couple in this vast collection) I think you can take it as written that I quite like his work! Nick’s poetry will not be for everyone – he is often dark and gothic, some of his poems deal with mature themes or include language that not all will want to read. But, he is no angst-ridden teenager, his poetry displays depth and maturity. But, it’s not all dark and dreary in Nick’s world – Dream Sunlight expresses the urge to get away from it all, whilst Endless Summer expresses delight in the joys of summer (“A time of blue skies and cold beer / in pubs in the country.”) tinged with nostalgia (“We may grow older but we’ll / never forget the times we had”). A fascination with aircraft is a common theme of his poetry.

Rookery takes us to visit the home of the Brontës: “These birds have nested here for years, ever since the Brontë sisters lived and died at Howarth. / I hear the rooks cry and I know it is the same cry Anne, Emily and Charlotte heard so long ago.” Nick covers a multitude of subjects.

Given that Nick experiments with different styles of poem on a variety of topics evoking so many different emotions, I believe that almost everyone will find something that resonates with them in this collection. He sees the dark underbelly of the world but counterpoints it with hope and warnings about falling into the same traps.

If you have read his poetry, you already know whether or not you want to buy this. If not, you could do worse than receive an introduction to his work with this volume. With so many poems, it is also good value for money (not one of those collections with one five-liner a page!). Highly recommended! 

                                    DJ Tyrer, The Supplement, Issue 33, March 2007.