Alma Brayden launched her first collection ‘Prism’ (published by Seven Towers) at Cassidy’s of Westmoreland Street last Wednesday 19th May. It’s a fine collection, which has a colour reproduction of one of her own paintings on its cover and, in my view, is the best  Seven Towers cover so far. And you can tell this book by its cover: the poems are full of colour and detail. She read her ‘Celtic Animals’ poem and ”Chiaroscuro’– the one about Carravaggio’s cat. (I don’t know whether this poem is based on research or pure imagination, but it’s very good irrespective). I heard her read her very clever poem ‘Pythagoras in Love’ before and it was great to hear it again. Lots of other poems too, sad ones and humorous, and afterwards reading the book, I found two others I really like a lot, both entitled as a colour: ‘Blue’ and ‘Yellow’. The language of many of the poems, like these two, is very spare and balanced, and I like that. I’m looking forward to seeing/hearing her next Wednesday (26th)at the Open Mic.