A history of 'charred loves' evolves here in the nervy, attentive poems of Janette Ayachi. New York, LA, Barcelona, Las Vegas and Amsterdam are the haunted rooms that the poet explores. Their various cultures shape her forms and images, but it is the relationships that sustain interest, redolent with passion and its aftermaths.
Amy Wack, Editor of Seren
As Janette Ayachi started to read, I felt the world open out before me. Her poems ranged from Venice to Barcelona, to the Adriatic Sea, to airports, 'where the choked heart unclogs itself.' She spoke with the uninhibited wanderlust of someone who is utterly in love with travel, and by the time her reading ended, I thought my own wanderlust couldn't get any more pronounced.
StAnza reviewer
'Janette Ayachi uses words in a rich, painterly way to create layer upon layer of images that are both moving and evocative. Her work draws the reader into different worlds, allowing us to experience these worlds with all our senses.'
Pippa Goldschmidt
No-one reading her poetry could doubt Ayachi's determination to experience life as acutely as possible. Despite the prevalence of ghostly figures and spiritual voices, her poetry smacks of living life to the full and encapsulates the world from a whole host of different angles.
a serial wanderer, Ayachi is bringing baroque language back into poetic fashion.
Unlike many modern poets who have a tendency to use minimal or plain words in an interesting fashion, Ayachi uses all words in all fashions, in layers of baroque inspired language which tangle together to form visceral images and visions.
Janette Ayachi lends poetry a gothic glamour as a sort of linguistic dark fairy with an innate Scottish ability to handle hard-core liquor - quite frankly a role that urgently needed filling in the contemporary poetry landscape.
Rhona Scullion, For Booksake reviewer from '10-Ways-To-Love-Janette-Ayachi' May 9th 2014.
