How did you let him go? With black ink and legalese How did you let him go? It’d be another year before I could vote [.] The first lines of Imagined Sons’ opening poem “A Birthmother’s Catechism” make an uncompromising, direct introduction to Etter’s most recent collection, which explores nearly two decades of pain and Read More
“Paint and weapons have more in common than I previously realized. They both suggest to their owners surprising and possibly noteworthy things which might be done with them.” Kurt Vonnegut’s weapon was a pen. This is one of the many memorable quotations from the man himself, dotted throughout Kurt Vonnegut: Drawings, a book made up Read More
Mesopotamia, Damian Smyth’s most recent poetry collection, is one which perceptively explores and interrogates the notion of war. Inspired by both his own upbringing in Northern Ireland, and by the recent conflicts with the near East, the poet provides poignant and introspective insights into the lives of forgotten casualties. “Mesopotamia” is, of course, the name Read More
Of the few good things to emerge from the Great War’s horror, arguably the most extraordinary is the poetic canon. Charles Hamilton Sorley (of the haunting “mouthless dead”) gifted Patricia R. Andrew this title in a letter, “The war is a chasm in time. I wish that all journalists who say that war is an Read More
Sounding Grounds is poet, screenwriter and actor Vladimir Lucien’s debut collection. Originally from St. Lucia, Lucien has been previously published in various journals including The Caribbean Review of Books, Wasafiri and Small Axe. His work has also been included in the poetry anthology Beyond Sangre Grande (edited by Cyril Dabydeen), and he has worked as Read More
Carol Rumens, in the Guardian (24 March 2014) reviewed one short poem from this collection and used more words than I have for the whole book. The poem she picked, “Critique of Judgement”, is one of my own favourites because it is deceptively simple, using almost clichéd metaphors and similes but configuring them in a Read More
Blood was very much the theme at the Dundee Rep on Friday evening (March 6), as we took our seats for Blood Wedding, a dark tale of love, lust, betrayal and revenge written in 1932 by Spanish poet and dramatist, Frederico García Lorca. The walls of the cafe bar were papered with blood-stained copies of Read More
Sigurður Pálsson is an established poet in his home country of Iceland, having won the Icelandic Literary Prize in 2008. He has built up a considerable reputation in France, which earned him both the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1990, and Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 2007. Read More
Heather Phillipson’s debut collection has been extremely well received, and was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. It is an immediately arresting collection, wherein the poetry crackles with a strange electricity. The volume’s conceit is that it melds high-intellectual thought with domestica, all run through with an erotic undercurrent. This is certainly an Read More
Poetry in translation is not particularly well represented in the UK, but the Arc series of parallel text translations is certainly doing great work to alter this state of affairs. Beautifully produced, interesting publications that profile either single authors or a variety of poets in an anthology, Arc’s series of poetry in translation makes work Read More