Karen McCarthy Woolf(Dialogue Books, 2024); hbk, £20 Infinity is an episode long and troubling to decipher [,] Dolly How might a writer work their way into writing an expansive historical telling of the vastness of United States, uncovering a multitude of people, of oppressions, victories, defeats and ongoing struggles? Recalling the cliché, ‘When Read More
Fri 13 Sept – Sat 5 Oct, Dundee Rep Theatre As theatre sub-editor for DURA, it feels strange to confess that, up until recently, I’d never seen an Ayckbourn production. I’d read his non-fiction book, The Crafty Art of Playmaking, but never watched a single one of his ninety plays. I’m glad my first Ayckbourn Read More
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight(Jonathan Cape, 2024); pbk, £13, Food for the Dead by Charlotte Shevchenko Knight is a hauntingly evocative poetry collection that weaves together Ukrainian history, personal memory, and the deep scars of generational trauma. At the heart of the collection is a powerful timeline of interconnected poems, moving backwards from Kyiv in 2021 to Read More
Kelly Michels(The Gallery Press, 2024); £11.25, pbk Sean Scully’s oil and pastel on aluminium depiction of the American flag (‘Ghost Gun’) on the front cover of Kelly Michels’ debut collection, American Anthem, confronts and provokes its reader – the facile drawing of a gun swaddled in blood-tinged bandages in the box-section where the stars usually Read More
Sanah Ahsan (Bloomsbury Poetry, 2024); pbk, £9.99 Sanah Ahsan’s I cannot be good until you say it is a poetry collection of uncompromising vulnerability. Awarded the Out-Spoken Performance Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, the White Review Poet’s Prize and the Bridport Prize, Ahsan’s confrontational and questioning poetry is Read More
Victoria Chang(Corsair Poetry, 2024); pbk, £12.99 On the Poetry Foundation website, ekphrastic poetry is defined as ‘the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture” which in turn ‘may amplify and expand its meaning.’ Metaphor’s imaginative carrying over of the qualities of one dissimilar state or entity to another, Read More
Ella Frears(Rough Trade Books 2024); hbk; £14.99 Ella Frears’ second collection, GOODLORD, is a convention-defying tour-de-force. In a form-flouting, novel-length poem framed as an email from an aggrieved tenant to a letting agent, Frear unpacks notions of ownership and autonomy. In an unrelenting pace, with bitter irony and piercing clarity, Frears lays bare the injustices Read More
Jasmine Cooray(Bad Betty Press, 2023); pbk, £10.99 Jasmine Cooray’s debut poetry collection, Inheritance, is nominated for the Forward’s Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection. Besides being a poet, she is also a psychotherapist, BBC Performing Arts Fellow, and former National University of Singapore Writer In-Residence. She has published and performed her poetry since the Read More
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Fady Joudah,(Out-Spoken Press, 2024); pbk £11.99 Shortlisted for the 2024 Forward Prize for Best Collection, Fady Joudah’s seventh poetry collection […] articulates, paradoxically, the silenced and unspeakable. Comprised predominantly of poems similarly titled ‘[…]’, navigated by a narrator who identifies as ‘unfinished business,’ this collection deconstructs political boundaries from the margins, giving voice to intergenerational Read More
Rachael Allen(Faber, 2024); pbk; £12.99 God Complex is a study in toxicity, focusing on a poisoned self, a poisoned relationship and a poisoned environment. Its fascination with the darkness of its subject makes for a difficult but compelling read. Rachael Allen’s new collection is an extensive narrative meditation on various forms of breakdown—and also attempts Read More