“Alanna Offield’s debut pamphlet vibrates with authenticity while never for a moment sacrificing originality. Her intoxicating use of language never strays too far from the plainly sayable, and yet trips to Olive Garden with her mother, and to Wholefoods while carrying her soon-to-be-born daughter feel like crossings into another world, one so deliciously and ever so slightly askew. Channelling herself on occasion through celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Bill Murray and Whitney Houston, Offield discovers something about herself, and in doing so offers up an honesty that is as courageous as it is introspective, achieving via her chosen avatars a new way to explore the ‘confessional’. A Native American, Offield’s New Mexico experience contrasts wonderfully with her experience in the North of Ireland, particularly Belfast, which becomes a kind of atavistic concrete Roswell where familial and romantic interactions can be coded and covert while remaining entirely recognisably human. Friends and family are remembered in elegiac, often humorous, tones reminiscent of Raymond Carver at his best, though the voice of these poems is utterly Alanna Offield’s. This is a new voice in every sense of the word. Reading this pamphlet made me wish I had what she has.” – Matthew Rice, author of The Last Weather Observer