It is a testament to Mona Arshi's talent that, after a decade of not reading any poetry at all, her work had me clambering for old anthologies. Of course, little of what I read afterwards was as elegant, moving, haunting or true. Nothing less than Britain's most promising writer.
Sathnam Sanghera, The Times
Beautifully direct, and delivered a kind of instantaneousness that I admired a lot. The diction very clean too, and the forms involving in their twists and turns.
Andrew Motion
Mona Arshi's poems are purely lyrical in the best sense. Each poem caries its own weight and musical pleasure much like a Bach partita... I am in awe of this work.
Norbert Hirschhorn, London Grip Poetry Review
The second collection by this Forward Prize winning poet examines the aftermath of grief with poignant exactitude... Arshi leads us towards light and hope in poems that are both 'arboreal and free'.
Poetry Book Society
[A] precisely realised, haunting second collection... Arshi's poems address the persistence of deep grief, and how it bears down upon those who remain.
Alice Hiller, Magma Poetry
[Arshi] creates micro-worlds of dream-like intensity, surreal distortion, fantasy and myth... Arshi's rhythms are varied and finely honed, in a way that only extensive quotation could illustrate.
Edmund Prestwich, Acumen
[On 'Let the Parts of the Flower Speak'] This is a fine ars poetica: it is when Arshi is at her most delicate, serving her lightest touch that the poems go deepest.
Martina Evans, The Poetry Review
Arshi can shape words into the smallest of forms, from which seedlings and glowing hearts spring. Each poem in Dear Big Gods is distinct, but sometimes, a seed planted in one poem sprouts up in another.
Nina Mingya Powles, The Scores
