Book review: Little Universe by Natalie Ann Holborow

We continue our reviews of books shortlisted for this year’s Wales Book of the Year award.

Little Universe is one of 12 English language books shortlisted for the 2025 Wales Book of
the Year.

You can vote for this year’s People’s Choice Award here. 

Eric Ngalle Charles

The writing in Little Universe meanders through familiar places and landscapes, exploring themes of belonging, arrivals, departures, family, death, and rebirth. Over the past three weeks since it landed on my desktop, I have read it three times.

I adore the writing of Natalie Ann Holborow; I first encountered her work, And Suddenly You Find Yourself in 2020. I read it and appreciated her autobiographical style.

Few writers compel you to pause and reflect, take a deep breath, and declare, “This is simply magical.” Natalie Ann Holborow is one of them. The poems in this collection consistently pose the rhetorical question asked by William Henry Davies, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”

Master

Holborow is a craft master. She knows when to pause and allow the poems to breathe. Take the title poem, “Little Universe,” dedicated to Leo:

“Every morning, he chants the planets
as though in a prayer, rolling plastic spheres
until they align across his bedroom rug.
For hours he kneels tight-lipped,
nudging Jupiter back into orbit,

rolling Mars across synthetic wool…’’

This poem slows down time. We see Leo, fully inhabiting his world, far removed from the chime of life’s machines in the hospital. A child can use Sellotape to mend a broken biscuit.

It’s a perfect world where everything is in order. This poem and many others in this collection agree with Glyn Maxwell’s suggestion, “who masters form, masters time.” In this poem, Holborow allows us to see Leo presiding over his tiny universe, arranging solar systems, and bringing the world to order. You will have to read the book to find out more about who Leo is.

Handprints

As I read the poems in this collection, I recalled an old story my mother used to tell us about the children who arrived and those who departed. As toddlers, we would wash the soot from an old lamp and play hide and seek. One place we could not hide was in our mother’s bedroom.

One evening, after washing the lamp, my brother concealed himself under the sheets in her room. The next day, my mother summoned us. “Who was hiding in my room?’’ When we didn’t respond, she unfolded her bedsheet, revealing tiny handprints.

In Little Universe, Natalie Ann Holborow has left her handprints in the world. Take the fifth stanza of the poem “Into the Gŵyr:”

“On Llanmadoc, trees rake themselves
brown across marshes,
a slow snowfall of curlews
breeze whipped to a slippery hush.’’
Or the second stanza of the poem “Anemones,”

“drawn to those skinny red hairs. Like any
devious flower-aconitum, rafflesia, oleander-

dark is calloused in toxic places,
split the sudden blade of light…’’

Pulsating

Little Universe is divided into four sections. The first is Pulse, where you will find fifteen pulsating poems, including “Balancing Act” on page eleven. You experience the poem as a wave while your head sways from side to side, much like an apprentice ping-pong player.

The second section is titled ‘Inhale.’ Here, you will discover ten exhilarating poems that will leave you breathless.

“Tell it to the trees’’ sounds like something out of “The Prelude, Book Twelve’’ by the English romantic poet William Wordsworth: “Go to the Poets, they will speak to thee.’’ Holborow’s second stanza reads:

“Tell it to the trees
to the branches cupped in your open palm
blooming to sudden angles, pale as candles
melting down, a swell of leaves unlatching
in the last of the yellow afternoon…’’

Contemplate

The third section is Exhale. Here, the writer employs fifteen poems to encourage us to breathe out and contemplate the themes of arrival, pregnancy, rebirth, and new beginnings.

In “Companion Moons’’ the poet tells us:

“My phone illuminates – a photograph of my sister
weeping over the wet, purplish heap of her son
moments after his entrance.”

I treasure the poem “Microchimerism.” The last three lines read:

“We carry our secrets through supermarkets,
drift among the fruits, pausing for a moment
to feel six pounds of honeydew cradled in our arms.’’

The beauty of this poem lies in its subtle details, suggesting that memories can be both burdensome and yet also cherished. Some we share, while others we keep, reflecting on the world through the narrow passages of our graves.

Marvellous

The last section of this collection is titled “Departures”. Here, we are presented with seventeen marvellous poems, from “Checking Out” to “Imagine”.

I was engrossed in reading “The Janitor is Crying in the Gents” on page fifty-eight. I paused to reflect on the meaning of departures. I hummed the Mopkwe (the language of the Bakweri people on the foothills of Mount Cameroon) song, “Oma weh Mbundi wakeh,” a longing for my friends and sister, who are gone, knowing I will never see them again: Ndingue, Palmer Ngalle, Njie, Libika, Kulu.

I have always regarded arrival and departure as two burdens of memory. Sitting in an empty room, on a park bench, on a bus, gazing at reflections in a trickle of water, or the train station, observing empty carriages and recalling the faces of those you loved—recounting their names, knowing you would never see them again—their faces, their smiles, their hair in pigtails—these memories become less frequent with each passing day. As the writer succinctly conveys in the last stanza:

“the terrifying ceremony of arrival
against the peace of those departing.’’

In Little Universe, Natalie Ann Holborow invites us into a bidirectional loophole between two worlds, enabling us to appreciate those small moments. When it comes to memories, we must decide what we take with us and what we leave behind.

Little Universe by Natalie Ann Holborow is published by Parthian and is available here or from all good bookshops.