In a context beyond the confines of her pamphlet, Dialogue on the Dark, Nuala Watt has stated that “If you have a serious and/or lifelong condition, you need to develop a psychological firewall […], an essential piece of psychological kit” (see note below). Indeed the first page in the pamphlet is devoted to Watt’s response Read More
I practised deep inhaling, hoping, like you, to float. You travelled so light, your shoes never lined up for cleaning on Saturday nights. I imagined a flutter of postcards, you summoning me. The thick thunk of junk mail daily hit the floor, deposited by the wheezing postie. I named a constellation after you. It’s still Read More
“So Don, why do you love poetry?” It takes only three words of Don Paterson’s reply to what I naively think will be a nice, easy first question for me to understand that this is not going to be an hour of nice, easy assumptions. “Oh I don’t” he replies immediately “that would be a Read More
Hwæt! Whether you take that iconic, still-contentious word as an exclamation, an exhortation, or accept Heaney’s gently Hibernian “So”, whatever aspects of the Anglo Saxon epic you unravel in Leásungspell , from the first Bob Beagrie alerts you that all is not as it seems. Huisht, lads, haad ya gobs [.] Set in Northumbria, 657 Read More
“Facts are chiels that winna ding / An downa be disputed” (Robert Burns, “A Dream”, 1786) This is an important book. As well as a history of the Scientific Revolution, it is a polemical defence of the very notion of such a revolution and an attack on the relativism which has infected much of academia Read More
Sister, it’s time to trace the stories on your skin. Slick our myths across your chest. Open your wounds. Begin [.] Amazon charts Northumbrian poet Catherine Ayres’ journey through breast cancer, a mastectomy and the fallout for herself her family, friends and relationships. Normally, I avoid reviewing friends’ work, but I have made an exception Read More
If you are looking for fiction that intertwines realism and the uncanny then The House at at the Edge of the World by Julia Rochester is the right novel for you, portraying as it does, adulthood from a different perspective, and one that evokes nostalgia by examining the changes and evolution of a child’s vision Read More
As explained by Ed Vulliamy in the foreword, Michael Jacobs was working on this book when he died prematurely. Jacobs had hoped that the very process of researching and writing the book would enable him to solve the mysteries of the painting he regarded as the world’s greatest: Diego Velázquez’ Las Meninas. More broadly, in Read More
Comma Press is one of the better known small publishing houses that has built its reputation as much upon a backlist of work in translation as in English. Comma’s many anthologies, short story collections and novels by writers from Britain, from across the Channel and further afield are waking us up to the richness and Read More
s s u n n s s e t t the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the CrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrookCrook road road road road road road road road road road road road road road road Most poets prefer to work with a laptop or perhaps a pen and paper. Read More