Jacob Polley is the author of four poetry collections. Previously shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, with The Brink(2003); Jackself is both a move away from the style of his previous collections, and also follows quite naturally in the same vein. Polley’s work tends to explore eerie, curious stories and tales. Rather like Ted Hughes, Read More
Where love begins is Judith Hermann’s second work of fiction. It follows her 2009 success Alice; a collection of five interconnected short stories. Herman’s new novel follows a similar framework to her previous fiction, allowing her readers snapshots into her protagonist’s domestic lifestyle. Stella’s life in a German suburb is monotonous. Her days are preoccupied Read More
Rachael Boast won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2011 with Sidereal. That same collection also won the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize. Her latest collection, Void Studies, “realizes a project that the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud had proposed, but never got round to writing.” The collection’s title is almost a Read More
Inspired by the ideals of pan-Caribbean unity espoused by her muse, yet obscured by his shadow, Esther Phillips steps out from behind this unrecognition to offer a candid reflection of life and love. Dedicated to the highly publicised and acclaimed Barbadian writer George Lamming, her “commensurate artist” and lover, Leaving Atlantis recounts Phillips’ experiences through Read More
Originally from Cullen, Co. Cork, Bernard O’Donoghue has been an English don at Oxford University since 1965. This is his sixth collection. O’Donoghue has been a recipient of the Whitbread (now Costa) Prize for Poetry and Faber published his Selected Poems in 2008.Being shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize (for the best collection of Read More
“Shine the torch, count the eyes and divide by two”. My own mother’s description of checking the sheep always seemed odd to me but Gillian Clarke says much the same thing in her poem “Ark”: We wake nightly in the early hours, dress for the rain To count their faces in the flashlight, their glittering Read More
The taut neologism of the title, under Paul Klee’s glorious painting “The Fruit, 1932”, in tandem with the titular poem and the opening of “Ultragreen”, convinced me I was about to read a collection devoted to the study of synathesia. I was very wrong, despite that first section’s immersion in colour which fades slowly into Read More
The American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain”. Katharine Towers’ second poetry collection, The Remedies, is a clarion call to a kind of modern day transcendentalism. She might not wear Read More
They say a lifelike portrait has eyes that follow you round the room; the four pairs of eyes on the cover of this collection by Maureen Duffy seem to do just that. The striking design by Rupert Gowar-Cliffe is arresting. Whose eyes are these? Are they Duffy’s? Or are they our mind’s eyes as we Read More
I wanted people to sit still for one goddam minute but they flash through your life – portraits are for the dead. In these lines, Tamar Yoseloff voices Jackson Pollock as part of a remarkable narrative sequence, but such is her versatility that it may also speak of her own prolific, multi-faceted output. An American, Read More