SOURCE: Wormald, Mark. “Delving Sensually.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4464 (21-27 October 1988): 1181.

In the following review, Wormald describes Mornings in the Baltic as an “ambitious first collection,” noting that the quality of the poems remain inconsistent throughout the work.

Mornings in the Baltic is an ambitious first collection, not least in its scope. Adam Thorpe delivers fifty-eight poems, and if some of them are slight, none lacks substance. The title-page hints at the range: “The Landing, c.1000 BC” follows “Zebra, A” and precedes “A Short History of the Human Species”; other titles point towards personal memories, while yet others parade literary sources. “The Therapeutic Masseur”, “Bachelors” and “Windows” seem to crouch in the shadow of Larkin; “Neighbours” and “Witness” echo recent offerings from the large and small screens.

That the poems themselves depend on their titles and the expectations these foster, without ever seeming merely derivative, is a tribute...