“The hardest thing of all is to see what is really there” (J A Baker) I clatter down the stairs of the Tower Extension at the University of Dundee, heart pounding inside my chest, hoping that my voice will come back to me and my nerves will disappear like the rolling haar on the Read More
Imogen Hermes Gower’s debut novel, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, is a beautifully written slice of Georgian life that depicts the fortunes of a widower merchant, an ambitious courtesan, and a mermaid. Gower’s London is intricate and robust; she uses her background in archaeology and anthropology to breathe life into the city through the smallest Read More
Virtual Walls | Real Walls is the first solo exhibition by pioneering visual artist, Madelon Hooykaas. Born in the Netherlands in 1942, Hooykaas has devoted her artistic life to working with photography, film and video. She makes documentary films and short film installations, but she also “works with” film in a literal sense, interacting and Read More
“They all want the Germans gone, just like you do. But don’t be thinking that makes you welcome”. Set in the Ukraine in 1941, one of the darkest periods of that country’s history, Seiffert’s story is told in language which seems, in a remarkable way, to echo the rhythms of the native language of her Read More
The great Gaius Valerius Catullus lived, loved and died in northern Italy around the time of Julius Caesar and Cicero. Not much is known about him other than what can be gleaned from his poems, for example, that he had a great fondness of kissing: Give me a thousand kisses, then one hundred, then a Read More
On the cover of Lia Purpura’s marvellous collection of lyric essays, On Looking, there is a close-up photograph of a strange bony object with clavicle-like hollows and spinal protuberances. Our classroom exchanges about exactly what this represents always lead to discussions on Purpura’s themes and poetics. Jessie Greengrass’s second book will spark exactly those kinds Read More
Claire Askew’s debut collection, This Changes Things, opens with “Dukkha”, a starkly beautiful and shocking poem, at once lyrical and political. It moves from a list of basic human needs – simple shelter, water and food – before escalating to include guns, banks and barbed wire to protect property and resources. It ends chillingly: [….] Read More
What does it mean to be true to the self? How can we come to terms with the atmosphere of our upbringing and with the life force which propels us? These questions seem to set the remit of Paul Deaton’s carefully observed, plain-spoken poetry: “Pushed or pulled the growth of your life?” (“Profusion”). Deaton grew Read More
At a forgotten house I see my mother opening some back pantry door, Her who died forty years later, Remind her who I am. She seems preoccupied, Almost fades out, the scene – a home? – suspended. Perhaps, though, turning, less absorbed, she whispered: ‘Come back when you have died.’ (‘Wild and Wounded’) A Michael Read More
Dundee: UNESCO City of Design, the only UK City listed in Lonely Planet’s top ten European destinations for 2018; home to a new museum designed by an internationally-renowned architect, a redesigned and revived waterfront, a new railway station and a new airport building with a reactive façade which adjusts to Scotland’s varying daylight levels and Read More