Gail Low

Song, “Oh Dear Me”, included in The Four Marys by Edward Small performed by Jane Campbell

Song used in Edward Small, The Four Marys (Dundee: The Voyage Out Press, 2017; ISBN:9780995512313)

Night Sky with Exit Wounds (SHORTLISTED, 2017 TS ELIOT POETRY PRIZE; WINNER, 2017 FORWARD POETRY PRIZE FOR BEST DEBUT COLLECTION)

There is a tradition of photography that focuses on urban poverty, decay, disintegration, and entropy; in “urbex”, crumbling, abandoned buildings are transformed into hauntingly and fashionably beautiful images. I couldn’t help but bristle at the title of Ocean Vuong’s newly Forward Prize crowned and now TS Eliot Prize shorlister, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Is Read More

Raking Light (SHORTLISTED, 2017 FORWARD POETRY PRIZE FOR BEST DEBUT COLLECTION)

Sure, there is a kernel of some mattered thing in here and understood if only you can eat it and make it matter much. ({{du|he|tao}}) Eric Langley works as a lecturer at UCL, specialising in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature. Although he has had previous publications Read More

Make Us All Islands (SHORTLISTED, 2017 FORWARD POETRY PRIZE FOR BEST DEBUT COLLECTION)

Trinidadian poet Richard Georges dispels the myth of the Caribbean as a modern-day paradise in his debut collection by invoking the ghosts and shipwrecks of his native islands in a sequence of darkly foreboding poems. The opening poem “Griot” sets the tone with its description of the voyage of the enslaved Abednego across the Atlantic Read More

This Time in History, What Escapes / Afghanistan

It is the empty space between, the reduced, then pared-back-again aesthetic of the spartan cupboards in Rose Frain’s installation This Time in History, What Escapes / Afghanistan currently on show at Edinburgh’s Summerhall, that catches at the heart. Lockers at the corridor end of the old veterinary college building are stocked with minimal provisions – Read More

Angel Hill

Michael Longley has been the recipient of some of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world, including the Whitbread, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, and most recently the 2017 PEN Pinter Prize. Longley calls his home in Carrigskeewaun, Co Mayo his ‘soul-landscape’; the environment that feeds and inspires his soul. In Angel Read More

Psalmody (Shortlisted, 2017 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Debut Collection)

I cannot help but question: Does he know the Lord? … So what’s his life about? I want to know. “8” It seems misrepresentative to call this prize-winning début a “collection”. The word implies that each item within has distinctive merit to be effective in its own right. In the case of Apichella’s work, it Read More

FOURTH PERSON SINGULAR (SHORTLISTED, 2017 FORWARD POETRY PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION)

At the intersection of poetry, philosophy, and psychoanalysis lies Nuar Alsadir’s Fourth Person Singular. The title is a play on words. If to speak in the third person is to speak removed from the situation, the proposed fourth expands on this separation This manifests in the dreamy detachment and self-reflective awareness that underlines the collection. Teetering in Read More

Nazhad and the Bell

TRADE, Hospitalfield’s Autumn Contemporary Art Programme, brings a powerful 2-screen video projection work entitled Nazhad and the Bell by Kurdish-Iraqi artist Hiwa K to a Scottish audience for the first time. Installed within Arbroath’s historic Arts & Crafts property, this is a rare opportunity to view the project – originally commissioned and shown at the Read More

The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx (Shortlisted, 2017 TS Eliot Poetry Prize for Best Collection)

This is Tara Bergin’s second poetry collection; her first, published in 2013, This is Yarrow, won the Seamus Heaney Prize and the Shine/Strong Award so it comes as no surprise that The Tragic Death of Eleonore Marx should excite much interest. Deservedly so, this is a collection from a unique poetic voice. Playful, dreamlike, with Read More