Bell Club

'George Winters died suddenly of Mondays'

As this opening zinger suggests, The Bell Club is a lively debut collection of poems assembled with wit and warmth, suggestive of the gentle absurdities and sensibilities of local and personal memory. Many are shaped by the author's experiences growing up in Norwich and around the Norfolk coast, but in striking and poignant ways, they move seamlessly from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Maggie Smith and crocodiles in Vietnam.

There is a spareness to the description and a lightness to the emotion, which allow the reader space for their own responses. At times, this restraint creates a very moving effect.

The poems are at their best when combining the confessional with a lyric form of observational analysis and when focused on the detail of small moments to create striking, precise images

A gift for portraiture is also revealed in the poems: the Franco-American couple, the chip shop owner, the trombone player.

If your requirements for a modern poetry collection include modest but engaging elements of surprise, haunting - by the dead remembered, by romantic memories and by missed opportunities - though never indulgent or morose, and a combining of the confessional with a lyrical take on history and culture, then Martell's The Bell Club is your new favourite.

Paul grew up in Norwich, where his family's roots trace back several generations. He began writing as a teenager, penning lyrics for a punk rock band Commercial Object. The band used to meet in The Bell Hotel, said to date from 1485 and was one of the city's leading coaching inns.

He has kept journals for 40+ years, and poems reveal themselves when a jotted thought from perhaps 20 years ago collides with something in the present. Recurring themes are time passing, regret, loss and death. His poems speak of fleeting moments, things seen and heard, and people who left a lasting impression.

Paul attended Wymondham College Grammar School and studied Finance & Economics at the University of East Anglia and Exeter University. After a career in banking, he returned to the University of East Anglia and completed a Creative Writing MA (Poetry). He currently lives in Oxfordshire, but retains strong emotional ties with Norwich and returns there often.