Wilton Carhoot, The Slab, 2003

I'd like to invent a poetry prize and name it, 'The shimmery, glittery prize for slabtastic, slaboroo, euphonious poetry, which for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on, makes me feel happy.' I'd like to award it to, Matt Welton Esquire. This book is a wow, and I wouldn't be doing my job properly if I didn't try to put my finger on that that it is that I enjoy so much about this book. The main strength of this book is in its obsevance of metre and format. There are strict rhyme schemes, mostly fully end-stopped, it refreshes me to see this, surely I'm not he only one out there who sees a clever enjambment and thinks gee whiz pass the salt. As great as Armitage and Duffy are, it's a shame that we now have a generation of Armitage and Duffy wannabees. Find your own voice, like Matt. Welton seems to have put his nose to the grindstone as far as the craft of poetry is concerned. The results are startling, I'm sure I saw some distorted villanelles and cleaved sestinas, this is great, format moved forward, dynamite shoved under the poetry manual. I'm sure Welton could take a Yorkshire pudding recipe, mix it into a pantoum and the results would be imaginative and linguistically interesting.

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It is a happy book, a real joy, and it's not often you say reading poetry is a sheer joy. I think it is underpinned by Welton's use of positive language. How could you not like a poem titled 'The Fundament of Wonderment' or 'This is Delicious to Say'? It deserves to do well, but we don't think you'll find it in many branches of Waterstones, Borders or Tesco (they sell books don't they) which is a shame because in our book, right now, he is a lot more important than Rudyard fucking Kipling.