Milan Kundera’s The Festival of Insignificance seems poetic, personal and political on the one page and then dismissive and cynical on the very next. The novel is the perfect microcosm of the nihilistic modern world, and when that dystopia is set in the historically romantic city of Paris, it turns into a symbol of tragedy. Read More
An arresting title offers a strong launching place for any book but the reader who tries to find the source of this particularly wonderful one will have to wait. The titular poem, unusually, is the very last in this, Ellen Phethean’s most recent, collection. By the time the reader finds it however, she will have Read More
Katherine Stansfield’s debut collection, Playing House, is quirky and surreal, witty and menacing. Her subject matter includes the auction of John Lennon’s tooth, bleach, jetlag, crisp sandwiches and office politics. It’s a collection which is refreshingly unthemed and varied in style, form and voice. In “Africa on BBC One”, an East African Shoebill is addressed: Read More
Click on the above image to view Writers Read: Kirsty Gunn in conversation with Chris Powici. Powici is a poet and academic, and also the editor of literary magazine Northwords Now. His latest poetry collection is This Weight of Light (Red Squirrel, 2015). You can read a new poem by Powici, “The God of Read More
I was born between the Creggan and the Bogside, To the sounds of crowds and smashing glass… “Derry”, The Whole and Rain-domed Universe To enter into conversation with Colette Bryce is to be drawn into a life marked not only by an Irish Catholic childhood, with its pleasures as well as its vivid memories of Read More
There are a lot of islands off the North-West coast of Europe, so it is easy to get lost among them, or even mislay one. In Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone, John Lennon is trying to get back to his island in Clew Bay, in the very west of the West, but has forgotten which of them Read More
On the 11th November 2015, I was fortunate enough to interview Jim Hinks, who is Project Lead at Comma Press for their latest piece of software, MacGuffin – available as an App for iOS or Android, as well as a website. As the press release says: “The MacGuffin App has a simple, yet revolutionary, innovation: Read More
This is an edited transcript of an interview conducted by Jim Stewart 22nd October at 2015 Dundee Literary Festival for DURA. The interview can be viewed by clicking on the image above. Jim Stewart: It’s a pleasure to introduce Peter Davidson – a fellow of Campion Hall, University of Oxford. Peter has written poetry, and Read More
Sean O’Brien’s sixth full collection, The Beautiful Librarians, may be seen as large in comparison to its range of overplayed political themes. Opening with the poem “Audiology”, the speaker describes hearing the “unfracked oil of Lancashire”, which may not be termed a tired poetic subject yet, but certainly the rhetoric has the potential to become so. Read More
Alert, morning sharpened by pre-breakfast sun you turn under orange descents foretelling in rowans. Pathed ginger, bright past crocosmia flames, thrown at this garden’s end. Monitoring summer’s last breath, you skinny in – amber, aware. © Beth McDonough</blockquote >