POEMS FROM  THE MIND SHOP by David Ashbee

"‘Poems from the Mind Shop’ is a gloriously rich book from a poet with a real love of language and the ability to evoke the extraordinary from the everyday. A close observer of people and places, David Ashbee creates finely-drawn characters whose idiosyncrasies we recognise and enjoy: ‘his chuckle like a bottle emptying’, while  poems about art or nature conjure new perspectives and reveal how the world, not just his old schoolteachers, leave ‘handprints’ on his soul."
               Alicia Stubbersfield
Senior Lecturer in poetry and Arvon tutor

ISBN: 978-1-913329-30-3
​2020
Paperback, 148 x 210mm, 130 pages
RRP £12.00
​Available to order from the author through our CONTACTS page.

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David Ashbee was one of the first new poets published by Enitharmon Press in 1989, with Perpetual Waterfalls. A member of Cherington Poets and Cheltenham Poetry Society, he has regularly performed in schools and festivals, and at ‘Holub,’ the Severnside poetry group he has run for 30 years. He reviews new poetry for ‘South’ magazine, in which his own work frequently appears.

"This is Ashbee’s fourth collection of poetry, a man who is both a visual and word artist. The title refers to the charity shop where he volunteers. A place where many come for solace, so an appropriate title for this book; a place to visit and 'meet' like-minded people like the poet and those he celebrates. [...] there is always a sense of humour even if a slight sting in the tail feathers [...]There is so much here, and everyone will find poems here to suit."
— Maya Pieris​ reviewing 'Poems from the Mindshop' in SOUTH 64 magazine 

U. A. Fanthorpe described David Ashbee  as ‘an incisive poet, brilliant at conveying tactile sensations, the strangeness of the moment. There is something theatrical in these gifts...’

Of his last collection, ‘Loss Adjuster’ (bluechrome, 2007),  Anthony Delgrado said: 
‘David Ashbee is probably  the most complete poet I’ve ever met – he can do just about
everything and make it look easy.’

Bill Greenwell, reviewing “Loss Adjuster” in Envoi magazine, wrote: 
‘It’s one of Ashbee’s skills that he can bring poems to a cool wry conclusion.’

New Hope International Review said: 
‘Ashbee is a poet of myriad mental muscles, and the power in the direction of their thrusts is usually a delightful surprise.’