The World Cup (Waterloo Press 2010) is simultaneously the Holy Grail of a female football fan; an oceanic chalice of tears; and a brimming goblet of history, culture and myth. In a kinetic sequence of poems that journeys from Mexico and post 9/11 New York, through the conflicts in Ireland and the Middle East, to a no-holds barred game of love thrashed out in London, Brighton, Amsterdam and Greece, Naomi Foyle displays not only her abundant lyric and narrative gifts, but also a winning warmth and humour. Containing an honest brew of self-reflection, at times almost painfully intimate, The World Cup comes laced with astringent socio-political comment and is stamped with the trademark Foylean wit.

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Postcard Sent by Someone Else

I would have called last week, but
there was a riot at a football game, the police
shot a woman and her child, then the crowd
set fire to the post office and ripped
all the phones in the zocalo
out of their sockets …

I would have told you that this jungle
is the maw of the world – its hot breath
steams you open in your sleep, then, like
a trickle of army ants dismantling a palm tree,
a screech of howler monkeys shaking
the afternoon rains from the canopy
above your hamaca,
its enzymes
start breaking you down …

 

‘Subtle and wild, passionate and wise, Naomi Foyle’s second collection will bring her yet more admirers. Whether she is writing of the indigenos of Mexico or the state terrorism Israel practices on the people of Gaza: whether she writes of love and its mazes and despairs; the mishaps of a gangly footballer; or the free spirits of her home town Brighton, Naomi Foyle shoots both from the heart and the head. A vivid, pacey raconteur, with a sharp eye for satire, unusually, she shines at the longer narrative poem, burnishing a minor crisis into something wondrous, always with a relish for the pleasures of life whether serious or absurd. Warmth, curiosity, human sympathy are the base notes of a poetry commanding dramatically different themes and settings, and a variety of forms.’       ~ Judith Kazantzis

‘Naomi Foyle’s brilliantly detailed, sensually absorbed, light-saturated mix of personal findings and their extension into the political, make her poetry my sort of poetry. Naomi is her own subject, whether swimming in a scarlet two-piece at Land’s End, sitting in a restaurant window, arriving at Brenda and Isabelle’s object-littered flat, or acutely noting how ‘The sound your swollen finger makes/ plucking at the mouth/of the soda water bottle/gives my cheekbones definition.’ Naomi Foyle injects concentrated visual imagery into re-casting a world in which ‘men are sharp as lemons; women sting like limes.’ I go to her poems to see things shine clear as the light in a diamond.’        ~ Jeremy Reed