Recent Reviews

The Wreck of the Fathership

The Wreck of the Fathership is the seventh poetry collection from W.N. Herbert. Herbert was Dundee’s inaugural Makar from 2013-2018. This collection has its roots firmly in Dundee, but calls upon themes, techniques and artists the world over, and overflows with hidden meanings and metaphysics. Herbert’s Fathership is an outpouring of emotion, especially of grief that threatens to drown the reader but steered by such poetic genius that no such disaster occurs. The turbulent contents are handled tightly, deftly.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Dorian Gray, a would-be internet ‘influencer’, sells his soul – perhaps figuratively, perhaps literally – for an experimental photo filter which will keep his online persona eternally young and perfect. At once, Filloux-Bennett and director Tamara Harvey’s interest in retelling this story becomes clear. One can only guess at the biting wit Wilde might have imparted regarding the modern world’s seeming obsession with personal brands, para-social relationships and the drive to ‘sell’ an image of oneself on social media. A digital age of political radicalisation, misinformation and ever-eroding privacy.

The Marks on the Map

Brian Johnstone is far too well-known a figure in the Scottish poetry scene to require any potted biography here. That said, which Brian Johnstone will you meet in The Marks on the Map, his most recent collection?

Having and Being Had

In 2014, essayist Eula Biss took out a mortgage with her husband on a two-bedroom bungalow in Chicago. The experience made her uneasy. On the first page of Having and Being Had, Biss describes how a Mexican woman accompanied by four children, on seeing the front room of the bungalow was curtainless and empty, enquired if the room was available to rent. A moment of intense discomfort.

The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library focuses on the life of Nora Seed, a 35-year-old woman whose life appears to be without meaning or love. A life of regrets. After losing what little she feels she has left, Nora decides that life is no longer for her. Instead of dying, she finds herself in an in-between world – a place that is neither life nor death. Here, Nora is presented with the Midnight Library along with the opportunity to change every choice she’s ever made.

That Old Country Music

Kevin Barry’s most recent collection of short stories, That Old Country Music, once again proves his stronghold in the industry. The highly-acclaimed Irish writer uses this collection to explore many narratives that flow alongside the perils of passion. Barry creates this standpoint as a sort of anti-romantic. Each of the eleven stories proves of great interest in this way: from the heartbreak of a loveless life in ‘The Coast of Leitrim’ to the lost narrative of a runaway child in ‘Roma Kid’.

Dream

Until Saturday 20 March 2021Royal Shakespeare Company; available to stream live at https://dream.online/ There is no way to overstate the heavy toll continued covid restrictions has taken on the arts industry, especially theatre. Yet, companies and practitioners persevere, experimenting with new ways to deliver remote performances. One such experiment is Dream, a new production from Read More

Clyack

There is a warmth that emanates from the pages of Sheila Templeton’s eclectic collection of remembering, intimate reminiscences that span a lifetime, taking in a whole generation of perspectives. Clyack is a passage through life that can be enjoyed from cover to cover or, like the recollections explored and shared, as memories that surface in the mind, singular and unexpected though inextricably linked.

Collective Amnesia

In her poem ‘hand-me-downs’, placed boldly near the very beginning of her debut collection Collective Amnesia, South African poet Koleka Putuma writes: ‘I have learnt how to say my glass is half full even when it’s broken’. This collection as a cohesive entity offers no such pretence or platitude. Beautiful, thought-provoking, and scorching in its honesty, Collective Amnesia is a cathartic pouring-forth of words left unsaid for far too long.

Palimpsest

To consider Clive Birnie as a poet or an artist might be unnecessarily limiting. Both his artistic and written talent are on show in Palimpsest, the eighth of an experimental sequence of writing, whose vibrant aesthetics are indicative of his sincere love for visual art forms.