Aperture – A space through which light passes in an optical or photographic instrument, especially the variable opening by which light enters a camera. (Oxford Dictionaries | English, 2018) In Aperture, Anna Leahy creates apertures through which she envisions and encapsulates – vessels through which a reader may see light. Her collection seeks to peer Read More
I have one simple expectation of every poetry collection that I’ve ever read or will read: that each poem will connect with others towards a cohesive whole. You can imagine my hesitation when four poems in I realised that Colin Will’s The Night I Danced With Maya failed to meet my criteria. Or did it? Read More
Writer, performer and burlesque artist Vanessa Kisuule is also a winner of over ten slam titles. She has performed at various poetry events and venues and has published two poetry collections – Joyriding the Storm (2014) and A Recipe for a Sorcery (2017). The latter, her most recent collection, uncovers the magical in the ordinary Read More
Rita Ann Higgins’s eleventh poetry collection, Tongulish, pulses with conversation. It is a stroll down the street; the ambience of the spoken word splayed across the page. Conversation is volatile and ever-changing from subject to subject; in much the same way, the poems within the collection cover a plethora of subject matter. It is a Read More
Indisputably, Emily Dickinson’s “Tell it Slant” works, but does her entreatment apply solely to poets? In Rego Retold Owen Lowery has rightly termed his collection “Poems in Response” (my italics). Ekphrastic poetry has many detractors; done badly there is reason for critical disquiet. If we are all in some way telling it slant then any Read More
“Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and dying as on a battlefield.” Memento Mori is Muriel Spark’s third novel and seems, at first, to be a simple mystery novel with a “whodunnit” to be solved. But Spark is Read More
The Bachelors, sets London as a stage on which its characters perform giving the reader the same intimacy as sitting in the stalls. In his introduction, James Campbell notes that this novel, first published in 1960, was written at a time when Spark’s career was taking a turn towards the theatre. This is, in many Read More
“What we are doing,” Tom told his crew, “is real and not real. We are living in a world where dreams are reality and reality is dreams. In our world everything starts from a dream.” This quote, from the final chapter of Muriel Spark’s Dreams and Reality, encapsulates the book’s title, and entices the reader Read More
As the title suggests, poverty is the central theme of Spark’s slim seventh novel, not just financial poverty but also a poverty of mind and spirit. Set primarily between VE Day and VJ Day, the novel’s central characters are the residents of the May of Tek Club, a boarding house in Kensington – For the Read More
“It wouldn’t have happened if Dougal Douglas hadn’t come here.” This February marks 100 years since the birth of Scottish author Muriel Spark. In celebration of her life and work, Birlinn will re-publish all her novels under their Polygon imprint to commemorate the occasion. The Ballad of Peckham Rye is her fourth novel, now out Read More