A Stint in Your Spotlight

REAL ESTATE (Salmon Poetry, May 2026)

REVIEWS OF REAL ESTATE:
– Poet Rosamund Taylor: “Real Estate is remarkable for its fresh observations of modern life and relationships, rooted in Mark Ward’s clear-eyed studies of intimacy, vulnerability, and pain. Deft and playful, Ward’s work shines with lyric ingenuity and energy.”
– Poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin: “Dazzling, exacting, unnerving. Mark Ward’s latest collection maps an erotic architecture of sex, queer longing, grief and discovery.  Artfully, the body sings through these electric poems. Real Estate claims new ground and dares you to encounter it.”


MASTERS (The Emma Press, October 2025)

A Books Upstairs Favourite Poetry Book of 2025! 
A The Lonely Crowd Book of the Year 2025! 
One of Claire Hennessy’s Favourites of 2025! 

REVIEWS OF MASTERS: 
– Publisher’s Description: “From John Singer Sargent to Francis Bacon and Keith Haring – covering romantic landscapes and surreal portraits – Masters curates a gallery of writing in response to paintings by queer men. Mark Ward’s voice inks that of the artist, the subject, and the viewer across poems exploring desire, grief, shame, defiance and surrender. Tender and daring, Masters goes in search of a shared queer male history across the past century, and invites us to look more deeply at the worlds beneath and beyond the brushstrokes.”
– Skylight47 Review (Ciaran O’Rourke): “Dedicated to ‘all the queer elders, past, present and future’, Masters is a miscellany of ekphrastic poems re-imagining the lives and loves of gay male artists, from Gerard Dillon to Yannis Tsarouchis. Carefully stepping inside the visions of his chosen predecessors, all painters, Ward himself has a keen artistic eye, drawing out the latent meaning and resonance of otherwise quotidian details: a ‘fridge left out in the sun’ serves as a kind of proof that ‘Debris / smashed in half, in quarters is still / debris.’ In ‘Three Studies of Two Figures‘, after a series by Francis Bacon, the viscerally mis-mashed shapes on the canvas erupt into speech, with bleakly laconic humour intact: ‘he’s reduced/us/    /  to a        squirm.’ Ward often portrays intimacy as a shock of physical longing and arrested breath, gusty and tender at the same time, ‘a thousand oblique / signatures inked’ into every gesture. ‘Burn me for light,’ he sings, and the need – strangely fixated – feels real. Here and there, a flatness comes into the writing, which doesn’t quite do justice to the sensuous subject matter bring described: ‘Now, in our bed, not touching, I know that / you’ve decided to go but can’t say it.’ One of Ward’s strengths, however, is his ability to convey a state of melancholy and speechless wonder, as life’s harsher revelations soften into understanding. Encountering a ‘wash of blue easily elided’, he says, ‘My eyes won’t recognise what must be loss.’ Inflections like this make sadness beautiful, and leave us wanting more.” 
– Poet Jessica Traynor: “These stunningly executed poems achieve what the best ekphrastic work does – they open windows into worlds both strange and familiar, vividly evoked in Ward’s pitch-perfect poems. Skillfully ventriloquising the voices of both artist and muse, and deeply rooted in intimate queer spaces, these poems are a testament to the subversive, sustaining and liberating qualities of art.”
– Sean Kissane, Curator of Exhibitions at IMMA: “These poems hit with force. They don’t flirt with metaphor or posture at cleverness. They expose. Ward writes from the gut, reaching for words to match the intensity of looking, of feeling, of remembering. There is sex, but it is ambivalent. There is romance, but it collapses. The body appears again and again: undressed, touched, shamed, adored, but never safely. What emerges is not a tidy narrative of queer life, but a lived texture of doubt, damage and longing, rendered with clarity and physical weight.”
– Poet Robert Hamberger: “Mark Ward’s Masters is a gallery of twenty queer artists, as if each painting opens a door to the complexities of desire. Ward gives voice to every brushstroke. He pinpoints passion with luscious phrase-making (‘a psalm in underwear’), lyrical imagery (‘Burn me for light. Lose a body in me’) and exciting variations of form, including a range of powerful sonnets. These poems play with the queer body as landscape, admitting the colours of shame and ambivalence alongside radical joy. Hands and skin, eyes and kisses dance, wrestle and swan-dive through Mark Ward’s singing lines.” 
– Poet Christina Carty: “(Masters) is a beautiful book of poetry.” 
– Writer Dinh Cao Tue: Masters was an ekphrastic poetry collection, inspired by artworks created by gay male artists across different art styles. The poems were written in various styles – befitting of the artwork and artist it was inspired by, but mostly variations of the sonnet forms – lending a concise impactful but no less emotional quality to their contents. These poems have supplememented and vividly conjured, in equal measures, portraits of the artists’ lives and legacies (such as in “Romantic Landscape”, after Vivian Forbes’ tragic life with his partner), their art-styles (such as “Three Studies of Two Figures”, whose experimental nature became evocative of Francis Bacon’s writhing abstracted figures), and the painting’s depicted subject matters (such as in “The Critic”, after Henry Scott Tuke’s painting – whose portrait was made the collection’s cover image -cheekily adopting the persona of a reader/viewer-as-critic). Mark Ward invites us to be part of his process, in reflecting the complexities of loving, and of recognising queer experiences’ heterogenity, while also how similar our emotional experiences can be across art, media dn eras. It takes an experience-r of artworks, and of poems, to bridge that gap between the past and present, and create more art as responses and dialogues; pockets of timeless beauty; bruised and healed. 
– Poet Tim Kiely: “It was a treat to take in these furtive, intimate, wry and melancholy poems in this lush pamphlet from The Emma Press.
– Writer Ilina Jha: “I had the privilege of reading an early draft of this pamphlet back in 2024, when I was part of The Emma Press’s inaugural Birmingham Editorial Readers Group, created to help choose two publications for 2025. Masters stood out to me instantly as a project with a clear, defined vision that was very well executed; now, reading the final pamphlet, I am confident that we made the right choice in selecting it for publication. Mark Ward has an assured poetic voice that allows him to delve into the tug of war between shame and desire, the history of gay (specifically male) art, sex and love between queer men, and the nude male body. Personal highlights for me include ‘The Duel’, ‘Romantic Landscape’, ‘Marsh Landscape’, ‘Land and Water (No. 2)’, ‘The Critics’, and ‘The Farewell’.
I’m honoured to have played a part in this pamphlet’s journey to publication, and I would thoroughly recommend Masters to everyone.”
– Poet Claire Louise Walker: “Masters by Mark Ward is a beautifully tender masterclass in ekphrasis. One of my favourite pamphlets of the year – gorgeously published by The Emma Press, and selected by their Birmingham Editorial Readers Group.”
– Poet Cyril Wong: “Paintings and drawings by queer men – from Francis Bacon to Keith Haring – are given perspectives only a poet can create. A gallery of feeling through art refracted into poems that dip in and out of stories they hint at. Loss, separation – but especially desire “stopped short”, whether about a duel or boys posied beside water; a wrestling with longing unexpressed. Every page offers insight into the way we love – or how we can’t. In these paintings “a world can be remade.” I love the return to an innocence of desire before shame: 
I kiss you and it feels like the funfair / where we first met. The other are watching / the boys we were find each other again.“
– Five star Goodreads review: “Masters collates poems responding to paintings by queer men, which was a tagline that immediately captured my attention. I love ekphrastic writing, and was very drawn in by the overarching theme, because it’s just so good! I received my copy last Friday and immediately devoured the whole book, spending a relaxing evening looking up paintings as I read the poems. It was lovely having a visual there to reference and really get a feel for the writing, which beautifully depicted the atmosphere of the paintings, creating emotionally resonant portraits that added so much more to the source material. These poems are powerful, evocative and lyrical, reflecting on desire, romance and longing, and expanding these incredible paintings into wider narratives that inspire and provoke. I loved every poem in this collection and I’m sure I’ll get even more from them on a reread, which I definitely plan on doing soon!”
– Five star Goodreads review: “This poetry collection was an absolute gem. Beautifully written, evocative, and full of heart, every poem felt intentional and deeply moving. Mark Ward’s words linger long after reading—lyrical, intimate, and profoundly human. I adored every word of it.” 
– Writer Andrew Verlaine: “”Masters” by Mark Ward is a powerful collection of poems with an interesting high concept – poems inspired by different paintings by queer men. I had the good fortune to attend the launch of this collection at Books Upstairs in Dublin. The curator of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Seán Kissane, spoke about the power of this work and how it relates to queer Irish history.
For me, highlights include the creepy “Land and Water (No. 2)” (after John Singer Sargant) and the bittersweet “Medical Students” (after Gerald Dillon). It was also interesting to see an homage to Felix Gonzales-Torres, whose work is also referenced in Carmen Maria Machado’s dark experimental autobiography of an abusive same-sex relationship, “In the dream house”.
My one quibble with this collection is that it could be longer! ^_^ In the acknowledgments, Ward notes that there were a number of poems that didn’t make the cut, influenced by artists such as Derek Jarman, Luis Cabarello and Robert Rauschenberg. It’s a pity they didn’t get over the line for a slightly longer collection. I will be looking forward to Ward’s second full-length collection, “Real estate”, which is due in summer 2026.”
– The Portobello Bookshop: “A bold, intimate collection that reimagines queer art history through poetry – essential for readers of Frank O’Hara and Ocean Vuong.”

PRESS FOR MASTERS:
– Landscape with Blue Pool: Masters, inspiration and queer history (a little article by me about the origins of the book)

(of my work in general)
– Poet Damien B Donnelly: “faultlessly provocative, sensual and down right horny”

Poem Beginning with a Line by Jean Sprackland
– Poet Michael Dooley: “Similar is how they speak to intertextuality, with Mark Ward’s ‘Poem beginning with a line by Jean Sprackland’ an anaphoric testament to the capaciousness and wit of a poet’s imagination.” (from launch of Skylight47 #19)

FAULTLINES (Voidspace, print March 2024; for online version, scroll down) 

REVIEWS OF FAULTLINES (print version)
– Poet Wes White: (review of live Faultlines reading) “An extraordinary text which combines the empathetic draw of confessional poetry with the narrative twists of gamebook mechanics, Ward’s exploded sonnet stands as a model for the potential of the form. Experiencing it as part of an audience making communal choices was especially powerful, as we seemed to veer between options that were compassionate or cruel; particularly considering that we were guiding the poet back through his own choices.” (link to full review)
– Poet Carolyn Thomas: “Achingly beautiful, Ward challenges the sonnet form through an interactive sequence that takes the reader forwards, backwards through alternative possibilities of a single, painful event, the failure of love, replaying it over and over. The combination of direct honesty and elegant musicality, together with daring experimentation in structure, make Faultlines a joy to read.”
– Nick Murray, Director of Playing Poetry: “Through Faultlines, Mark Ward lays out an archaeology of tragedy for the reader to dig themselves into. Ghosts emerge from longing and from memory, sometimes to torment and sometimes to enfold. By deftly subverting the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre, Ward creates a poem sequence that spirals through a single tragic event, over and over, and like that moment of playing out a memory in your head, to divine the moment where it all went wrong, reality shifts and new histories start to grow in the haze.”
– Calum Rodger, Author of PORTS and Rock, Star, North: “What if the sonnet were not the closed box of fourteen lines wherein a love is captured – fixed – and so contrived, but rather played out like a gameplay loop of minor and major variations, its love inscribed (and re- and re-inscribed) in overlapping sprawls of all the could-have-beens-but-weren’t of its collapse? Such is the poetic force of Mark Ward’s Faultlines. Its Möbius strip structure invites a hundred million billion ruminations on the ways in which our dreaming, impulsive souls are fated to fail at love, and to forever replay that failure. The erotic thrill of feeling the sonnet ‘explode’ in Ward’s (and the page-flicking reader’s hands) proves there is some vitality in the old form – and our loving – yet. 
– Marian Christie, Author of Triangles and Fractal Poems: “In this remarkable, non-linear sonnet sequence, the reader must navigate a succession of choices that act as a microcosm of life, with all its non-sequiturs and illogicality, its complexities and unexpected detours. At once formally crafted and groundbreakingly experimental, Faultlines occupies a liminal space between gaming and poetry. The result is visceral, compelling and darkly surreal – a true page-turner, in every sense. 
– Publisher Description: “A queer interactive sonnet about picking through the fragments when love goes sour, Ward invites you to forge a path through an array of surreal and nightmarish scenarios, and maybe…just maybe…find out what really happened. Or not. Try Again. Compelling, fascinating and shot through with a bitter-sweet truth, Ward’s work is a searingly clear-sighted love poem, a resonant exploration of the ways in which we deceive ourselves and each other, and an exciting development in interactive poetics. A must-have for anyone interested in interactive art, experimental poetry or the plain and simple exploration of the human heart.”

NIGHTLIGHT (Salmon Poetry, 2023) 

REVIEWS OF NIGHTLIGHT: 
– Irish Times poetry critic Jessica Traynor picked Nightlight as one of her Collections of the Year, in her extended selections on Twitter! 
– Poetry Ireland review (Rosamund Taylor): Like The Detachable Heart, Mark Ward’s Nightlight is imbued with sensuality. Earthy and vivid, Nightlight examines being queer in a heteronormative society, through friendships, sex clubs, and the bonds people make in strange places. While this is Ward’s first full-length collection, his assurance as a poet is obvious in the carefully-judged poems, and in the originality of his voice. 
             A reader of Nightlight may be first struck by an exploration of sexuality that is not afraid to look at vulnerability and alienation, as in the opening poem, ‘Bare,’ in which the narrator, ‘watch(es) your body reform, shivering / at cold spunk, aware of your breath’s harness’. Later, in ‘Trick’, Ward describes sex as ‘a transaction fulfilled bit by bit / by bite, by spit, by grit’, but longs for ‘a boy whose lips I want to kiss’. Ward can also find the beauty of brief moments of intimate contact, as in ‘Turkish Bath’, where touch creates a space separate from the pressures of the world: 
                           
                             Our groin and ass conjoining
                             the fiction that skin spins, 

                             our rhythms supersede
                             the heavy gravity outside. 

             The bonds between queer men, both historically and in the present, are central to these poems: ‘The New World, set in San Francisco, 1945, follows a young man who has been discharged from the army, and is ‘supposed to go back to shame, / to static geography’, but instead finds freedom in the city, where he is no longer alone: 

                             We carve it around us, its buildings
                             sculpt our rhythms, our skin, our nights. Within each moment, 
                             we are finally alive in the new world. 

             Dislocation is a constant presence in Ward’s work, but it is also full of moments of empathy and tenderness. In ‘Mobile Library’, we meet Mrs P, who ‘loves to read poetry’, and is found by the librarian stuck in her stairlift, feeling ‘the placement of her bones / like a flatpack skeleton taut, tightened’. The narrator thinks he’s ‘useless’ in the face of Mrs P’s struggle, and yet his very presence creates a sense of connection. Ward’s poems hold these ambiguities: whether emotional bonds can be sustained, how to feel safe in a precarious world, or who to cope when, as in ‘Recognising Similes’, you are, ‘forever aware what it feels like to unravel.’ The final poem, ‘Vegas Epithalamion’, a gift for a spouse, ends on a moment of intimacy, and invites the reader into a moment of love and completion within a flawed world. This tender collection gives its readers very genuine feelings of love and belonging, as well as those of loneliness. 
             All three of these collections are assured, imaginative, and surprising: they demonstrate the scope of Salmon Poetry’s vision, and the vibrancy of Irish poetry today. 
– Irish Times review (Stephen Sexton): Like Allen-Paisant’s poetry, Mark Ward’s Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, €12, 68pp) is resonant with performativity. Here, in poems of the body and sensuality, Ward considers the ways in which queerness is performed and reified; how identity is not conceived independently, but by the interrelations and interdependencies of the body and desire. The book’s opening image, in Bare, is one of sex mediated by the television screen: “lighting up limbs playfighting,/ righting themselves into well-oiled hinges”. It’s an aubade, of sorts, a poem of lovers parting. Ward’s variation is to give us the lover who is preserved by screen burn: “a skinflick burnt into the tv”. Elsewhere, Early Teenage Homosexuality is marked as a dramatic text, “For two or more players” in which the rolling of dice becomes a metaphor for the risk and reward of seeking sexual partners.
              However, one has the sense that the treat of harm is not far from intimacy; this is contested, furtive love. And, owing to that discretion, so often, the idea of a self is arrived at through negation and the subjugation of one’s attributes and qualities: “bury the greenery of your accent/ in collage; learn to think/ inside the barrage of noise”, Ward writes in Ten Steps to be Correctly Consumed by a City.
              The corporeal aside, there are excellent descriptions and musicality throughout. A hospital gown is a reverse straitjacket in a poem blending the worlds of medicine and drag. The poems are often at their best when the poems’ sonic features are to the fore, such as in Trick: “your tongue as tender as kindling/ the moment dwindling/ to a regret at not saving all of this/ for love”. There’s much promise in this confident debut. (paywalled link)
– Novelist Andrew Verlaine: After the chapbook “Carcass”, I was looking forward to Mark Ward’s debut collection, and “Nightlight” delivers. These are poems with heart and brains, where there’s always something at stake. As others have said, these verses are visceral and authentic.
              Structurally, different poems play with different forms, but there’s always an accessibility behind any experimentation, and pieces like “bare” and “trick” are refreshing in their immediate musicality, like hearing a four-on-the-floor dance tune after the more jazzy style of most poets operating at this level.
              Check this out – one of the most consistently engaging collections you’ll come across.
– Poet Breda Wall Ryan: Your poetry is very strong and memorable. Congratulations on a very fine and individual poetic voice.
– Poet Andrew Howdle: Thirty-seven out of the forty-four poems in Nightlight have appeared in journals. The poems in many ways reflect their publishing history and how Ward’s poetry faces a world audience. A poem about San Francisco in 1945 might come as something of a surprise.
              The book carries introductions by McCullough, Hewitt, and McMillan, a powerful triumvirate. Both Hewitt and McMillan comment on Nightlight as if they are staring into a mirror, discuss poems “that are closely attuned to the body” or “witness the performance … which the body must endure.” McCullough looks beyond to the body’s self under attack. Nightlight is not Carcass, however, and the strongest poems in this volume are more concerned with human rights and dignity. “Mother Tongue” is Ward at his best. Here, he narrates and captures emotion with sparse language. The horrors of gay persecution in Chechnya are related with empathy and irony as the poem moves from electric interrogation to how the victims are housed like “battery hens”. A kiss is offered, but this is no time to sing the body electric. “Mobile Library” brings a meeting that brilliantly describes the mobility of human life as it passes towards death.
              The word elliptical is a favoured word that occurs three times in Nightlight . In “Turkish Bath,” men meet in a world of “elliptical rituals.” Date” terminates with “elliptical cruising.” And “Blackbird” sees the poet looks into the future with eyes that are “two ellipses, scattered into full stops.” The poetic method in Nightlight is disposed towards an elliptical method: there are moments where images jump and a gap appears, apertures open in perception and experience. This is both effective and problematical in some poems. “Circadian” and “Dorsal” (based on a graphic strip cartoon by Matt Boyce and a photographic collage by Robert Dash respectively) are two ekphrastic poems that are not easy to grasp without the original artwork.
              Nightlight is a volume filled with technical bravado. Ward handles taut couplets as well as Woods, employs etched stanzas as finely as Gunn, and “Mongrel” is a witty, tragic-comic sestina. Nightlight is a volume written by a poet who is well-versed in the history of gay poetry and has honed his craft meticulously. (link to GoodReads)
– Poet Anne Tannam: “Mark Ward‘s full-bodied first collection. A satisfying and illuminating read.”
– Poet & Writer Rachel Handley: “A stunning collection. Poignant, beautiful, an absolute must read!” 

HIKE (Bear Creek Press, 2022) 

REVIEWS OF HIKE: 
– Novelist A.J. Stanton: “A lot to be said for this curious little book. Firstly, the time and effort that has gone into the design is clear, with wonderful cover art and thoughtful layout. The writing though is fantastic, with a mix of poetry and prose that is both minimalist, yet full of imagery so that it feels like you are there, a part of Bear Creek. Immediately it gives off some real Twin Peaks vibes, and keeps a sense of dread building until the end. All in all, highly recommended.” (Five stars) 
– GoodReads Review (BookChampions): 
A foreboding plot
Hybrid haiku horror tale
Classic horror vibes

Journey of two men
Hallucinations galore
Memories stolen

Hint of *It Follows*
And some Clive Barker Realness
Welcome to Bear Creek
(Five Stars)
– Poet Victor Barnuevo Velasco: Si, a freelance photographer, needed to go back to his old town. The narrator of this book wanted to tag along, fascinated by the pictures of the town. At first Si refused but mysteriously agreed at the last minute.
What was initially thought of as an easy hike turned into a pleasure cruise before it became an experience straight out of an acid trip.
The books is structured in six chapters to provide a brochure experience of each section of the town. The twisting prose narrative is amplified and propelled by poetry at the beginning of and within each chapter, like a chorus in a Greek play.
Atmospheric and compelling as a Roald Dahl or Ray Bradbury, were they less wry and more erotically charged. I see a possible series.
P.S. The names of the publisher and the narrator hint at something wicked came their way.
– GoodReads review (Kristen): There’s so much to love about this concise, potent hybrid (poetry/prose) work. I’m already a fan of the Bear Creek Gazette — welcometobearcreek.com — and this sets an eerie, fantastical adventure in Bear Creek. And the humor. There’s a lot of humor too.
Support indie lit and buy a copy. 🙂 (Five Stars)
– Review by Ursula Caresse (an in-world review published in The Bear Creek Gazette): ‘Grisly & visceral’  

I’m taking a risk writing this. / Possession of the book is / A crime, according to The Mayor. / But The Mayor is dead. / We all know that, tho’ / Nobody admits it. / His guts have been spilt / Too many times. // I only read the book / Because Mrs Anderson, / The old lady with the fishy breath / Who sucks on Uncle Joe’s Mintballs / To no avail / Left it on the counter, / Told me I was / mentioned in it. / Twice. Laughed. / At the beginning and end Mark / -bewildered and beautiful – / Believes his mistake was / Following Si to Bear Creek / But his real faux pas / Was to assume we checkout girls / Just ‘wait for fresh flattery’ / Mindlessly, smoking and hanging around //  – and that’s why / I can only give him / 4 out of 5 Bears. / Because we Creekers know everything / Before it happens, but Mark / Was too beguiled by Simon / And snowglobes, tricked / BY a pack of dogs. // The twins tried to warn him / But he could not read the signs. / He should have come to us / for booze and fags. / WE checkout girls slip more explicit / Warnings into Marlboro packets. / Bear Creek can seriously damage / Your Mental Health. // There’s a door out the back of / The storeroom of Lloyd’s / To a lane running parallel / To Main Street. / Debbie Harry’s singing of / Incense and peppermints / I’ve seen the Editor of Bear Creek Gazette / Ambling along there / Muttering about ponies./ But we know he knows the score. / About quantum / Entanglement and shit. / He knows we could have saved / Mark. He also knows / We couldn’t. // On Parallel Lane / There’s a bar called / The Sleeping Cat. / We prefer felines. / We meet upstairs / in the room / With the holographic clock / Whenever there’s a need. // In Hike, Mark Ward gives / Us a grisly and visceral / Trip, which is somewhat / Satisfying. But he / Underestimates his / ‘Minor’ characters, / Misses a trick. // WE checkout girls / Invite Mark to / Come to the store / And ask for Ursula or / Calysta. He’ll recognise us / By our tribal tattoos / And fractal eyes. / Ask for a bottle of Redds / Apple Ale and 20 Marlboro / Go through the storeroom to / Parallel Lane / And head for the Sleeping Cat. / The barman is and isn’t Si. / The code Si asks for is in the / Cigarette packet. / Trust him. // He’ll lead you up / The spiral staircase to us / To an emergency meeting / Of The Cassandra Complex. / We were never waiting for / Flattery. / We only want to / Save everyone.
– Twitter Review by @temporalsoup: I really enjoyed HIKE, I thought it was fabulously dark yet just as enthralling and vivid of a ‘travel guide’–hats off too because the haikus worked surprisingly well. I had to read it twice over!

PRESS FOR HIKE: 
– SCAB Magazine #10 (pp. 65-70): Interview with Stuart Buck (publisher of HIKE) and Mark Ward
– Voidspace: Interactive Twine interview between Katy Naylor (Questions) and Mark Ward (Answers, Digressions, Disagreements and Twine Layout) (click link to play)
– Bear Creek Gazette: Take a HIKE – The Mayor interviews Mark Ward (a fictional interview between The Bear Creek Mayor and ‘Mark Ward’, the author of HIKE)

FAULTLINES (voidspace, online 2022 – for print version, scroll up) 

REVIEWS OF FAULTLINES (online version) – play here 
– from Marian Christie’s article, Routes Through a Poem: “(Voidspace’s) inaugural issue contains some stunningly innovative contributions, such as Faultlines by Mark Ward which offers a succession of choices and is as much a computer game as it is a poem. In Faultlines, as in life, we do not get to see the outcome of our choices in advance. The ‘true ending’ is only reached when there are no more options left to play.

CARCASS (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020) 

REVIEWS OF CARCASS:
– Poetry Ireland Review #133: “Mark Ward is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its fourth year. Carcass is his second chapbook. Entering its world of flesh and disintegrations, what strikes the reader first is the performative quality of the poems. They seem to want to come off the page. This is not entirely surprising as, in addition to wearing the hats of poet and editor, Ward is also a cabaret performer. In ‘The Swamp’, Ward begins by imaginatively constructing a literal set on which the poem will play out: 

“The place itself primordial, / some Beckett set design: / a mount to rest against / surrounded by darkness, / charcoal underfoot.” 

One of the most startling poems in the collection, ‘Blue Boy’ is a kind of extended monologue in which the speaker enacts a ghastly and lethal revenge on a homophobic flatmate. The poem, with its unusual but assured rhythm, seems written for the stage: 

“Have I regrets? I have plenty. Would I have done things differently? Probably. Does your mother miss you? I imagine so. Is the world better without you? I know so. Will an audience member here tonight report me? Possibly. And I would go quietly. And I would go quietly. And if they don’t, what will you do?”

Carcass is gritty and raw, with elements of horror. It’s a pamphlet that wants to directly engage with its reader in order to elicit a strong reaction, and pulls out all the stops to do so. [Review by Grace Wilentz] 
– Poet D.A. Powell: “The brief and putrescible flesh that forms us is the fugitive and mystifying site of devotion and erotic energy in these poems by Mark Ward, ‘the place itself primordial’ wherein we are made solid in a world of light. Exciting, mysterious, seductive, frightening… these are poems lit by moonlight, intense curiosity and speculative tomorrows.” (from the back cover)
– Poet Andrew Howdle: “Carcass attempts much in a short space and achieves a probing and unsettling vision of gay desire.” (Read the full, wonderfully in-depth review here) 
– Poet Eric Norris: “A spooky book that takes place in a weird landscape of horror and strange humanity.”
– Poet Seth Pennington: “Mark Ward’s poems are all bodies and skin and nails pumping a kind of erotic violence that takes the experience of reading and makes it something like edging, so that when he writes, ‘this is what we have chosen / to use our breath for’, you’ll catch yourself holding yours.”
– YA Author Deirdre Sullivan: “Ward’s work is bone-deep and scalpel sharp. These dark and compelling poems will enchant and appall you, sometimes simultaneously. They twist, turn and beg to be read aloud.”
– Poet Liz Quirke: “Carcass is a collection humming with moments of quiet fury. Ward brings us to a point of combustion where his language catches fire. He is a poet owning his power and ruling over his subject matter while showing a clear mastery of form and prosody. Ward confronts his reader, holds a mirror to the subjects of his poems and demands that we do not look away. The poems shapeshift and morph to reimagine the body, fear and the power that thrums hot in the act of seeing and being seen.”
– Poet Richard Leis: “Carcass by Mark Ward is not only an enticing short collection of poems with dark and speculative elements (“Blue Boy” was a particular highlight for me) but a beautiful physical artifact with that amazing cover and the maroon thread tying the pages together.”
– Poet Victor Barnuevo Velasco: “Careful,” Ward added when he signed the book for me, “there be monsters within.” Naturally that only triggered curiosity and I had to start April, “cruelest month”, month of poetry, with this book.

CIRCUMFERENCE (Finishing Line Press, 2018)

REVIEWS OF CIRCUMFERENCE:
– Novelist Virginia Hartman: “I read your book last night and truly could not put it down. Now (…) giving it a second read—it is so artful and moving, and triumphant in the end!” 
– Novelist Ryan Lawrence: ““It begins with letting him win / allowing him to see what’s within / without knowing if he’s kin.” – Mark Ward, Circumference (2018)
              ADMITTEDLY, I have never been a huge modern poetry connoisseur. I appreciate the power poetry has to express human emotion and tell stories more lyrically and fluidly than fiction; still, I’ve not visited this literary form too frequently. I do occasionally dip my toes in the deep waters of the works of Shelley, Keats, and Byron; Gothic Romanticism has always spoken to me. Queer Poetry also occasionally catches my eye. Such is the case here. 
              Dublin queer poet Mark Ward’s work of emotionally charged poems, Circumference, is fittingly named. The book shows that life is not always lived linearly but often circularly, where we return to the places and people we have loved and lost physically and/or emotionally. Conversations we never wanted to have (or finish) and feelings we never wanted to revisit all have a way of returning to not just haunt but demand attention. Resolution is a state of perception—or acceptance of what you get.
              The main thrust of the collection is that, as the 1950s come to an end, Tommy Martin receives a telegram notifying him of his father’s impending death. After many years away, he returns to his hometown of Pepperell, Massachusetts, where he is subsequently forced to relive his teenage years, reminisce about Mike, the boy he loved, and confront his estranged family.
              Circumference is a remarkable collection of poems exploring human life’s complex boundaries, particularly in times of emotional strife. The book focuses on the nuances and tensions that arise from the characters’ interactions, especially the narrator, Tommy, a queer man. As stated, Tommy is compelled to return to his hometown as his father is on his deathbed, and this return triggers a harrowing confrontation with his mother, who has never come to terms with Tommy’s sexual orientation. Then, Tommy’s memories of Mike, his first love, have also partially shaped aspects of his character through his intimate relationship with love and loss.
              These poems are powerful, expertly navigating the emotional landscape of love, grief, loss, and family. Like all poignant poetry collections, the reader is taken on a journey that sticks with them long after the book is read and put away on a shelf; it did for me.
              Ward masterfully delves into universally felt human emotions while focusing on specific narratives, particularly queerness and how it relates to self-acceptance and social/familial connections. Despite the differences between the poem’s content and direction and my personal experiences as a gay man, or even reading from a queer perspective, the raw emotional undercurrents are palpable, eliciting a sound emotional response. It’s a bodily reaction, and I felt that “gut punch” often. This is what great poetry does; it turns you inside out by creating that emotional connection where empathy and compassion are more desirable than actual familiarity with the specific experiences being written about.
              Ward’s collection of poems offers a glimpse into distinct, emotionally resonant and thought-provoking timelines. One where two teenage boys fall deeply in love with each other despite the odds against them. Their love is passionate, intense, and heartbreakingly beautiful. Another where an adult queer man returns to the town he once called home, a town that had rejected him years ago, and confronts the painful memories of his past. Mark Ward’s Circumference is artfully crafted, queer, and profoundly moving.”
– Poet Bryan Borland: “Mark Ward has named this slim volume of powerful poems Circumference, an apt title given the geological boundaries imposed on us by blood and heart: those things we run from; those things we run to. Here is the timeline of a life, not linear but circular, and the places and people loved and lost and sometimes found again. Here is the poetry of, if not redemption, then reckoning. Here is an understanding that coming-of-age is a process that never stops; that we all are coming-of-age no matter at which point on the circle we find ourselves. Ward has chronicled something aching and timeless in this collection: the weight of the legacies we carry, and the pull of the lives we invent for ourselves.” (from the back cover)
– Novelist ‘Nathan Burgoine: “the emotional reality of [Circumference] is so spot-on that I lean back from the chapbook and feel a tremble in my chest. I remember this, I think, of events that didn’t happen to me, but so easily could have been” (Read the full review here)
– Novelist Deirdre Sullivan: “A historic love story between two star-crossed teenage boys” (Read the full review here)
– Out in Print Queer Book Reviews: “Ward keeps his images sharp and his meanings clear, whether observing death or remembering how he came to live. This is work that scars as indelibly as the map etched on the skin of the cover model (a beautiful package credited to Inkspiral Designs). Highly recommended.” (Read the full review here)
– Poet Andrew Howdle: “Circumference usually relates to a part of the anatomy in gay poetry. Thankfully, Mark Ward’s Circumference has higher aspirations. His chapbook’s title conjures Donne’s famous image of a circle that is drawn as two souls, like the legs of a compass, yearn for one another. What evolves from the title is a fine collection of poems that map the boundaries of human life.” (Read the full, wonderfully in-depth review here)
– Novelist, Poet, and Essayist, Jeff Mann: “The poems themselves are adeptly musical. Ward has a real talent for ingenious rhyme and memorable rhythms, and he creates all kinds of tight forms throughout the book that any sharp-eyed reader will discern. (…) The book reads like a compressed novel, brimming with passion, fear, sorrow, and regret. I was hugely moved and impressed by this chapbook. Buy it. You will be too.” (Read the full review here, or on Amazon here)
– Goodreads Review (Eleanor) 5/5: “i could not put it down until I finished it out” (Read the full review here)
– Goodreads Review (Carol) 5/5: “Circumference is a 5 star read from me and I highly recommend picking it up.” (Read the full review here)
– Instagram Review (BookChampions): Let me tell y’all about a chapbook I read this month called Circumference, by Irish poet Mark Ward.
I don’t remember where I heard about this one—probably one of you lovely bookstagrammers—but it has been a few years. It is a delight to finally get my paws on it, and when the book arrived with an endorsement on the cover from Bryan Borland, one of my favourites contemporary poets, I knew I would love it.
Circumference tells a queer narrative (with flashbacks) in the form of a poetry collection. In fact, once I finished, I could easily imagine the novella or short story Ward could have written. But this design was wonderful; I love his reimagining of a queer story.
In the narrative, a 35 year old man returns, upon the death of a parent, to the family and hometown that rejected him. The poems tussle with wounds and memories from his teenage years, before he left—like the ones many of us inevitably carry in our bodies like tattered maps of places we hope to never visit again. But they linger, waiting for healing.
It isn’t a surprise that many queer books feature the queer body, skin exposed, because of this insidious mapping.
Circumference is a raw, honest book you can read in one sitting, and I would recommend you do it if you can.
And dear @faekplastiksteev — the poem “Mike Martin, Indiana” tore my heart out. If I could boil my reaction to your book down to one moment, it would be that one.
I recommend this lovely piece of art if you love poetry, especially those about the queer experience or featuring alternate forms of storytelling. This is a winner, and I hope to read more Mark Ward poetry soon. ✌

PRESS FOR CIRCUMFERENCE: 
– Writing.ie article talking about the inspiration for, and writing of, Circumference.
– Article on the book by GCN in GCN 342 (Read the full issue here)