from Green Bottle Press

"This gregarious, tender pamphlet criss-crosses the Atlantic: in Pennsylvania, a motorist and coachman each 'looks up from his century'; in Belfast, the poet searches 'for something déjà vu' among the musics and idiosyncrasies of Belfast. These poems are as infused with the cadences of the city and its poets as they are by half a century and more of American history. The Vietnam War – to which the author’s father was a conscientious objector – is here in the genetic code, so too the trauma of Europe’s wars, and the anxieties and terrors of post-9/11 America. Across the continents, among their people, through language luminous and formally controlled, the war poem and the love poem cohabit and, as they must, coalesce." — Stephen Sexton, poet

You can order Charm for Catching a Train

DIRECTLY FROM GREEN BOTTLE PRESS

Or from Poetry Book Society

"In Charm for Catching a Train, Milena Williamson writes in a subtle, political, and resonant way… Williamson is a poet of acuity, a writer whose work is worth cherishing and returning to."
—Molly Twomey, Poetry Ireland Review

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"Her writing is full of details of daily life, its deliberations, family, food and drink, and its Jewishness. The language sets a generous mood... Past and present are in a state of delicate balance."
—Sally Festing, Sphinx One Point of Interest Reviews

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"The poems of the pamphlet unfold in loco parentis. They bridge this distance and absence through various mediums: letters, journals, memory... Williamson's pamphlet demonstrates the capacity of love to not only instigate change, but to act as guide through it."
—Eoin Kelly, The Apiary

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"Williamson's language is gentle and even musical..."
—Poetry Book Society

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Read my feature on poems, process and time in The Honest Ulsterman

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Describing thrill of winning an Eric Gregory Award on the Society of Authors blog

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Watch me read "Charm for Catching a Train" with Poetry Happening as part of Books Ireland