If the reader seeks hearts and flowers in the sunnily-named Happiness, they are to be found, albeit pumping viscerally or severed in vases. Jack Underwood questions how we experience, understand, appreciate and attempt to capture that sometimes elusive state. In something of a Ying/Yang complement he explores whether happiness is possible without its shadow boxer. Read More
When reading poetry I have a habit of dog-earing the most affecting pages. Unfortunately for my edition of Rosie Shepperd’s The Man at the Corner Table, I’ve dog-eared damn near every page. Shepperd trained as an economist and has worked in finance throughout the UK and the US, all the while publishing poems in the Read More
On picking up Glaciation by Will Stone, my first thoughts were of death and religion in an Ice Age setting. This was prompted by the ice-covered sculpture of Christ on the front cover, and a quotation from Percy Bysshe Shelley seemed to confirm this assumption, “The glaciers creep like snakes that watch their prey, from Read More
Already a well-known figure in Britain”s Buddhist community, Maitreyabandhu founded Poetry East in 2010, a venture which set about exploring the relationship between spiritual life and poetry. As a teacher of Buddhism and meditation at the London Buddhist Centre, he is better placed than most to explore this connection. Already a published author of several Read More
Kate Ashton was born in Scotland and trained as a nurse in Edinburgh, after which she moved to London to work on Nursing Times. She has previously published fiction and non-fiction, reviews, and has worked in translation and in journalism ( mainly in the Netherlands), from 1979 to 2003. Her memoir, Losing Eric Gill’s Eden, is forthcoming. She Read More
Sarah James’ Plenty-fish cannot be gulped in one go, slipping as it does magnificently around in the imagination, never quite solidly poetry, but fleshy and fresh. The seventy-one-piece collection contains poems of varying lengths – all semi-anecdotal and detailed accounts of everyday life. As a graduate in Modern Languages, James’ sense of poetic form is Read More
The factual stories and prose-poems of The Dance at Mociu chronicle Peter Riley’s travels through Transylvania, Romania with their carefully crafted portrayals of the scenery, people, traditions and above all the music of the region. Through diligent wording and description, Riley brings to life a world we almost certainly have never experienced, and assuming we Read More
Luke Wright’s career as a poet has emphasised the indelible connection between writing and performance. Wright has been performing his poetry since he was 17 but it wasn’t until 2000 that he really explored poetry’s potential in the artistic community, co-founding Aisle16 with Ross Sutherland. Aisle16 mostly features Wright and Sutherland’s own work, alongside those Read More
Fossil Sunshine is one of those innovative and fruitful encounters between science and art. Having completed a course in creative writing at Warwick University and worked as an International Writing Fellow at University of Iowa (gaining much literary recognition along the way), Michael McKimm is now a valuable member of the Geological Society of London’s Read More
A Poetry Society Recommendation, David Pollard’s Finis-terre is an examination of mortality and creativity as the poet-narrator reflects on life and death while standing at a finis-terre – the end of the world. Spending half his life in Galicia, Northern Spain, Pollard has sailed past the Costa de la Muerte, where many sailors have perished, Read More