Black Mascara (Waterproof)

What Writers and Critics Think

• Black Mascara (Waterproof) is full of wicked invention, retelling the story of a road crash love affair through the muscular language of the racing bike and the Campagnolo Super Record groupset. Catching sight of a former lover ‘makes my iPhone flicker / with the ghost of a Nokia brick’. All kinds of inanimate things come alive enthusiastically in these poems: the stiletto heel, the music stand, the microphone, a wand with no spells, making every poem a delightful surprise.

  Imtiaz Dharker

• I really enjoyed the ambition and the craft in this pamphlet; the poet is confident and skilful enough to write in long lines with or without stanza or couplet breaks or in tight pieces of prose that ripple over the mind long after you’ve read them. Love and the possibilities of love and intimacy are examined and celebrated and quotidian adventures like bra fittings and running mascara are given the power of myth.

  Ian McMillan

• In Black Mascara (Waterproof), Rosalind Easton depicts the female experience through an intoxicating cocktail of Hollywood glamour, the literary canon and the surreal. A potential lover is evoked by a ‘peacock suede stiletto’, the poet’s grandmother is reincarnated as a novel, and Elizabeth Taylor takes over a school curriculum. Easton wears her cultural references on her sleeve – and her bra strap – inviting us into a world where David Gilmour, Coleridge and Shania Twain can all meet during a Mayfair lingerie fitting. These are witty, sexy poems that strut across the page

  Natalie Whittaker