Rosie Shepperd's poetry collection, The Man at the Corner Table, (Seren) is a sparkling debut. The voice is one of urban sophistication; a deceptively casual charm that tempts the reader with sensual evocations of food and place. We are lured by the tastes, colours and textures and a winning insistence on detail that blends irony into satire. We are in the middle of a poem before we realize that we are staring at themes that are vital and lethal: love, desire, grief and death. Like a secret recipe the author's technique is invisible, leaving us with poems whose flavours linger and become something that surprises and changes us.
