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Diana Wallace reviews
Docklands: A Ghost Story
by Damian Walford Davies and Hand & Skull by Zoë Brigley

Violence against women and the razor-thin line between the living and the dead are the themes which link these two, very different, collections. Damian Walford Davies’s Docklands is a Neo-Victorian ghost story in verse. In fin-de-siècle Cardiff, a city being built anew by coal-generated wealth, a successful architect wins a prestigious commission. His brief:

… to level Angeline,
Louisa, Adelaide – ragtag terraces

of lean abutting lives
from Wharf Street to the dun canal –

and raise a perfect square with limes
and fountains playing.

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