Empathy and Rage is a comprehensive and informative collection of essays from twelve contributors on literary representations of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), or Female circumcision, in African and Diaspora literature, film and other media. The book also provides an insight into the actualities of the practice itself, its geographical location and the history of the Read More
A peculiar feature of the Alliterative Morte Arthure, is that certain characters, including Emperor Lucius, are killed twice. Simon Armitage professes mystification at this. There needn’t be. The poem (c. 1400) is to a large extent combat porn. Like all species of porn, sexual or otherwise, it craves and provides sensation, narrative plausibility coming a Read More
The Dark Film, the fourth collection from the multi-award winning Paul Farley, delves yet deeper into the poet’s fascination with the visual, and explores further a wide array of familiar topics – memory, history, technology, national identity, landscapes. While the mood throughout the book clunks uneasily between the trivial and the serious, the verse nevertheless Read More
If love and loss are perhaps the most commonplace of human experiences, they are also amongst the most difficult to write well about. How is one to commemorate the shared intimacy of a relationship unique to lovers, “themselves absolutely, beyond imitation”, to craft fine phrases when so swallowed up in sorrow that “no one can Read More
Clearly, there is something about poets and bees. Observe them in Paradise Lost, hear them in Keats, and love them with Plath. The Poet Laureate Carol Anne Duffy published a whole collection dedicated to them. What is it, then, about bees? Is it their exquisite industry, that sonorous voice, their structured life and space, or Read More
Shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize in 2010, Zoe Venditozzi’s Anywhere’s Better Than Here lives up to the expectations created by such a nomination. The novel tells the story of Laurie, a woman who is fed up with her life, particularly her gaming-addicted boyfriend and her tedious job, and depicts the adventure she is Read More
“On a wind lashed coast in the far north a group of men assemble on a construction site. The Ness and Struie Drainage Project will dominate their lives for the next few months as they toil through the daylight hours and into the night, endure hardship and conflict and –mostly- survive.” So begins the blurb Read More
Written by Mike Kenny for the Dundee Rep Ensemble, The Snow Queen is a family pantomime with a lovely balance of sing-a-long songs, audience interaction, warm humour, compelling plot and clever stage design. This original and distinctly Scottish take on the classic Hans Christian Anderson’s tale makes jokes about the Scottish weather, comments on the Read More
Following the success of his first full length feature, 2008’s In Bruges, playwright-turned-director Martin McDonagh returns with Seven Psychopaths, a fiercely droll and self-referential comedy centred around alcoholic Marty’s (Colin Farrell) futile attempts to write a screenplay, for which he has little more than “a great title” – The Seven Psychopaths. Marty’s wish is to Read More