QuickFire, Slow Burning

by Janette Ayachi

Janette Ayachi's second collection moves away from the personal and delves into the universal with poems often taking flight from the page to parachute into performance. Her hypnotic voice lifts from a keen observing stance to one that probes the chemical reactions in nature, and especially in the body. Fire is seen as an element; as something environmental, a natural disaster. But Ayachi also plays with fire as a fuel in relationships; a heat felt and subject to synergy within the cells and flesh, a cardiac pulse, a love that comes quickly and burns slowly, constantly rekindling hope for change, peace and renewal. There is a mystic undertow that exposes the materials, the lore of bones and anatomy, pilgrimages and prayers, superstitions and super galaxies that she explores with language. Lost landscapes and lost loves merge as she confronts loneliness at the same time as showing us new bloom is on the horizon - that nature will always will us another spark.

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2024

About the author

Janette Ayachi is a Scottish-Algerian poet. She was born in London but moved to Scotland at the age of thirteen, and Edinburgh and Glasgow feature in her poems.

Ayachi's work appears in many literary journals and anthologies. Her first independent release was a poetry pamphlet titled Pauses at Zebra Crossings (2012). Her Hand Over Mouth Music won the Saltire Society Literary Award for the Best Poetry Book of 2019.

Reviews

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I eat the stars, they remain unaltered.” Janette Ayachi’s thoroughly exhilarating second poetry collection, QuickFire, Slow Burning, is brimming with light and heat — “the fire / invents a new kind of fire” — “some marvel, / dancing under those telegraphs of light. / Was I insufferable, well, the heart goes on / as well as it can until it can’t.” The way Ayachi uses such vivid imagery to segue from exterior to interior and back again is impressive, captivating. She manages it in the smallest turns of phrase too: “We search inside the screenshot of our hearts”; “I rinse myself / of laughter”; “to nestle in the margin of a sky”; “a furnace to store my love”; “What can we resuscitate, in love, in nature”. Ayachi is just as poignant as she is hilarious, quite a rare feat: “all I know is that you are not here / almost two months since the tollbooth closure / of your thighs”. There are too many standout poems, from the title poem to ‘The Mad Hatter of Heart Matter’, ‘The Anatomy of Memory’ and ‘Kill Your Darlings’, and my personal favourite ‘isolated, together’. These poems can be foreboding and heavy just as easily as they can be lovely and delicate: “signalling / more grief / & some clear sense / of a disaster worse than war”, “Today is a perfect day for a burial: / one more & then we mourn”, “I too have killed you / just to have kept you”, “I would make sure no one saw / & tell everyone he jumped / in a terrain with only the stars as witnesses”. Every year I look forward to Pavilion Poetry’s three new titles, and Ayachi’s latest collection so fearlessly leads this year’s pack, ending up “where the heart / sometimes finds itself / listening for echo & fire”.

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

I might be biased because I met the author but this poetry collection was so deeply hitting.