Errant is a fascinating collection that delves into the poet’s past experiences, with influences from other writings and encounters with other creative minds. Gabriel Levin’s sixth collection doesn’t fail to uncover, intrigue and take the reader through a myriad of places journeying between the poet’s homelands in the West and the Middle East. Levin who Read More
Songs drift from open windows: the radio, someone washing dishes, a tv, voices—more of an insight into people’s lives than the silent aquarium of closed glass. In Merrie Joy William’s collection, these open windows lead to childhood memories, romantic discovery, loss, life, faith and more. Her view into the past is never overly sentimental, but full Read More
The sober aubergine cover of the latest issue of Gutter is distinct from the magazine’s customary vibrant jackets. In collaboration with guest editors Alycia Pirmohamed and Jay G Ying, Gutter makes a stand against tokenisation in this celebration of Black Asian and Minority Ethnic writers from Scotland and across the world. Exploring the multi-faceted aspects Read More
It is not hard to spot Joelle Taylor across a busy theatre foyer. The tall blonde quiff gives her away, but as I approach, I notice an open confidence that suggests performance poet too. I meet her on the penultimate day of the StAnza poetry festival, less than a fortnight before such gatherings become a Read More
Scottish poet Gordon Meade releases his tenth collection of poetry with an approach towards awareness. He forms lines to accompany the stills taken by Canadian photographer Jo-Anne McArthur. The photos are a peek into another point of view, and Meade puts a face—and a name—to the images, breathing life into a moment captured in time. Read More
Guide the small boat of my body back to my self. Tell me which path brings me home. (‘Mercy’) Róisín Kelly’s first full collection (her chapbook, Rapture, was published in 2016, by Southword Editions) explores that very potent Irish Roman Catholicism with its personal and political resonances, and weighs it up against the island’s older, Read More
Nineveh is an astounding debut collection full of originality and adding to the vast and rich culture of Jewish poetry. It uses the stylistic device of hyperbole to disclose some of our self-destructive habits in the age of media. The author borrows, rethinks and comments on many of the literary greats before; Yehuda Halevi, Paul Read More
Donegal Tarantella is Irish poet Moya Cannon’s sixth collection of poetry. In proper Cannon style, this assemblage of poetry incorporates a raw, lyrical cadence in the appreciation of landscape and history to deliver a melody of words finely tuned for the page. Cannon’s poetry is a slow burn of rich imagery and poetic diction, creating Read More
Sextus Propertius (ca. 50 BCE – 15 BCE) may not be the most famous Roman poet of the Augustan age, but possibly unjustly so. Patrick Worsnip has now translated Propertius’ elegiac poems for the modern reader, reinterpreting the 2007 Oxford Classical Text as swift, easy-to-read verse poetry. No prior knowledge of Latin literature is Read More
How came separation to chisel, to cherish, to chafe? (‘Some Questions’) There’s always that danger in knowing a writer’s backstory, being aware of historical contexts, or as here, when we live through extreme times and cannot help but use that lens as we read. Over-reading and filtering poems through the reader’s experiences are rightly Read More