'...This powerful book is well worth the money not only for its unassuming psychological insights but for the exquisite sensual images that pervade, all of which are startlingly English. Don't be deterred by the subject matter, this is not a squeamish book; it is a book that explores our values of life and it is a book about endurance and beauty. About 60 pages long, its unshrinking, forthright style make it quite quick to read (I didn't want to put it down) but the images therein linger long after the turning of each page. Pieces should not be left sitting on any publisher's shelf; it should be dog-eared and passed on.'
Carol Thistlethwaite: Tregolwyn Book Reviews
Rip Bulkeley said - of some of those already published, in this case in the River King Poetry Supplement (USA) - '...suddenly I ran into something not just good but great, a poem which I hope has already gone round the world but if not should do so as soon as possible. It is Sam Smith's PIECES, an exhibition of 21st-century war via the small-town concentration camp...'
NHI Online Review
‘...a captivating exploration of love, grief, and especially hope in a prisoner of war camp... But Pieces is also about violence, and therein lies something fascinating and even beautiful ... The lines are musical, lulling ... creates an enchanted, awful place where people are dying, where we don’t want them to stop dying, so we can keep reading...’
Donna Biffar: Orbis #121
‘...one of the best books to have appeared in [the] UK so far this century...’
Jeremy Hilton: Fire #19
‘...The descriptive density and personal revelation of the experience give these ‘pieces’ poetic weight .... Smith has a winning style...’
The Black Mountain Review #6
'...Smith's language has an abstract and untethered feel, but his descriptions of the natural cycle of life continuing beyond and without reference to the prisoners are compellingly precise...'
L. Kiew NHI Online Review
'...prose-poetry items which stand alone, or as a landscape of observations... This is a new approach; you need to read it yourself.'
Geoff Stevens Purple Patch #101