for Jim On a cool, bright March morning, winded climbing Seabraes lane, I watched some blackbirds, hedgerow shy but full of song, digging and flicking, working soil. Upslope two gulls brawled noisily, heads bent low, necks extended, heaving choking calls over last night’s spoils: chips, cold and congealed. Just as quick, an easeful calm restored, two heads sideways turned – curious looks Read More
for Jim Call us common glow worms but we’re bioluminescent beetles. Newborn living lights, not like those old-as-dust stars. They will not return your gaze. They are looking down on Vikings. Step into your garden and watch our earthly constellations. Cradle us in your palm. Look us straight in the eye. © Jacqueline Thompson
This downhill roll pulls far hills close, removes the river between the stub field and the chalked snow light on the Sidlaws. No sense of that labour through narrows, the dark which swills the firth, currents past seal-banks, crossed by a strength of bridge. No sense at all. Sometimes that works. © Beth Mcdonough Ed Read More
(after Psalm 19) I miss the symmetry – the call, response – implied in ‘day to day’ and ‘night to night’; I miss that the days gleam, gossipy with news, that their gushing is also the springing of light, the gloss of the blossom that drips into honey. I wish our word for ‘gleam’ was Read More
In this entry for the Man Booker International, acclaimed Norwegian writer Roy Jacobsen offers an intimate novel which showcases the moving and evocative powers of literature. The Unseen is a book which on the surface, through its accessible and uncomplicated language, seems simple and plain: the lives of a single family living and sustaining themselves Read More
Shortlisted for The Man Booker International Prize of 2017, A Horse Walks Into A Bar is about the power of words—their purpose in a world that prioritizes only pretences. David Grossman’s combination of daring, controversial dialogue and compelling, desperate characters carries reader curiosity from introduction to denouement. It is a novel that demands attentiveness and Read More
(Ed- Prior to publishing excerpts from the 2017 Notting Hill Editions Essay prize shortlist, we asked the marvellous essayist Chris Arthur to write a piece on the essay within the academy… Read & let us know what you think by leaving your comments below.) Students don’t believe me when I say they’ve never written an Read More
Jane Draycott’s words have always encapsulated a timeless beauty with a charm which is somehow both otherworldly yet unmistakably rooted in our earth. In this her fourth collection of poems, following 2009’s Over, she continues in this vein. “It seems like forever”, she writes in the collection’s titular poem, “We are going to tame the Read More
SJ Fowler’s The Guide To Being Bear Aware is a paradigm for reflecting in a world gone awry. It is a collection with raw, political edge. Wittily, through a play-on-words, The Guide To Being Bear Aware strips the self bare, forcing the reader to acknowledge who they were before the influence of globalization and attendant Read More
it held in its hand, the spirit, a dainty fern of solid gold, as all ferns were before God loved and made them green. (“The spirit crept outside the house at night”) When we think of poetry, we do not think of silence; we think of a page filled, a rhyme uttered or uttered. Yet Read More