Bernadette Cremin is a British poet, performer and actor. Miming Silence is her third collection and this experience shows in the maturity of her writing. The poet knows what to say, when to hint or suggest, and where to stop and be silent. Divided into six sections of around ten poems, each part opens with Read More
Jeremy Reed is one of the most prolific poets currently working in Britain. He has published novels, poems, literary criticism and a number of translations. In other words, his work is not in short supply. Black Russian: Out-Takes from the Airmen’s Club, 1978-9 occupies, then, a curious space in his catalogue. The poems it contains Read More
Fred D’Aguiar’s The Rose of Toulouse is in many ways a highly eclectic text, with the poet not only flitting between free verse and more formally laid out pieces, but also managing to move seamlessly between themes. The blurb states, rather lazily, that this book is one of geographies; while that is certainly a dominant Read More
The Crumb Road may be Maitreyabandhu’s first book-length poetry collection, but he is by no means new to poetry having, for instance, already won the Keats-Shelley Prize. Born Ian Johnson, he converted to Buddhism in 1990 and his affinity with spirituality shows in his verse. The Crumb Road is for the main part concerned with Read More
Recreating one of the most ancient and well-known works of world literature is a significant task. Historically, the Ramayana has acquired more importance than a mere piece of poetry. Regarded as one of the greatest epics in Hinduism, these words hold heavy religious significance. Reworking a text of this magnitude is quite a task, and Read More
George Szirtes is a well-established poet, editor, and Literary Fellow. Born in Budapest, he came to England as a refugee in 1956 and was brought up in London, where he studied Fine Art, before publishing his first poetry book in 1979 . His poems have been published by several houses, earning him a host of Read More
Dannie Abse, poet and GP, read at Dundee University at least once, in the early 1980s. He was an imposing figure, and a fine reader. He exuded modest energy and drive, and quiet achievement. Now that he has entered upon his tenth decade and has suffered major losses, the keenest that of his beloved wife Read More
So here’s the rub: his salt, your skin. He flays you first, then kneads it in, (Wetsalter) Drysalter, a purveyor of powders, dyes, colours and cures, also puns providently on “Psalter”. There is considerable challenge in both aspects of the title. Perhaps curiously, Michael Roberts describes his poems forming as individual entities which later shape Read More
Maurice Riordan’s fourth collection is one of deceptive complexity. Read in isolation, individual poems such as “The Noughties” may seem overly brief or inconsequentially anecdotal, but this is a collection which must be read as an organised whole. Clear thematic threads are formed around ideas of modernity, technology, memory and personal loss, but these strands Read More
1939 was an excellent vintage for Northern Irish poetry as both Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley were born in that year. Indeed, in some sense, their verse is not dissimilar in that it is never pretentious, and there is much to be said in favour of poetry that somehow manages to imbue everyday occurrences with Read More