PRAISE FOR
CRUEL & VICIOUS
With startling and freshly unique imagery Alanna Hammel captures the deep and the real with an all-encompassing vigour. Her sense of rhythm, intelligent use of rhyme, alliteration and assonance reveals an accomplished and cultivated style. Her ability to catch and hold the reader's attention is imaginative and revitalising as she challenges the reader to think while simultaneously illustrating gems of wisdom and insights.Alanna Hammels work is a breath of fresh air in a sometimes stagnant and predictable field and she exhibits skillful,natural rawness and ground breaking originality.She is most definitely one to watch."
ANNE IRETON
Álanna Hammel’s writing evidences fierce questioning, her spare phrasings inviting us to linger a while over this verb, that noun. She offers the voice of a youthful spirit, her talent a vessel cradling an old soul. Let’s follow her course.”
ALLSTON JAMES
"Álanna Hammel writes poems that are fun. The imagery and sentiment determines her voice and tone. She uses language which reflects what she sees of the world. Her imagery leaves the reader with lots of storyline. Her voice and tone determined."
BERNIE WALSH
Álanna Hammel’s debut poetry pamphlet reflects on lived experiences and invites us to find amusement at our own expense. In a compelling voice, this collection meditates on life and writing. Throughout, Hammel underlines the struggle to make meaning or sense of poetry, yet she succeeds. This is a pamphlet of multitudes: from lost schooldays to the green shoots of college life in Two Lattés and a Lemon Meringue, from the wonder of crafting poetry to the sense of exasperation at not knowing ‘the rules’. Taken together it is a collection that asks the reader to go beyond the binary of either/or and embrace a sense of both within the same space. Hammel’s work speaks to trial and error in a wonderfully playful collection that flows with wit. Her poetry captures the tonal range of youth and she brings the reader with her in her lyrical debut that vibrates with energy.
GRÁINNE DALY