The Weepers by Lindsay Macgregor, is a collection of poems which deals very eloquently with loss. Openly autobiographical if not always obviously confessional, these poems began to form in 2008 after Macgregor’s partner was diagnosed with terminal cancer. A short time after she was bereaved, the poet embarked on a creative writing course at the Read More
John Hemming is an explorer and writer especially interested in the Amazon region and its indigenous peoples. In Naturalists in Paradise, his focus falls upon the mid-19th century collecting exhibitions of three important British naturalists: Alfred Russel Wallace, Henry Walter Bates and Richard Spruce. Wallace is well-known to biologists, but is eclipsed in popular memory Read More
It becomes clear from the very first poem in this collection, that Crib is no light bedtime reading. This sub-sequence of forty poems is a selection from a larger collection of a hundred and eleven poems, written for the poet’s young son and completed on his first birthday. All of these one hundred and eleven Read More
Eleanor Rees’ latest collection, Blood Child, deals primarily with people and places, with Rees taking great care in establishing tone and atmosphere through skilfully painting romantic landscapes. To me, it seems that Rees’ poetry is much more concerned with creating images and aesthetic appeal rather than an exploration of subject matter or themes. Often the Read More
This intriguing collection by A B Jackson journeys through the fantastical and the mundane with a somewhat counter-intuitive outlook upon both. Jackson approaches his topics whole-heartedly, allowing his reader to wrestle with his ideas. In some (most notably in “Inexpressible Island” and “The Find”) there might be an apparently graphic and crude feel to his Read More
To capture the effects of war on a person, humour the reader and shed doubt upon our country’s health system are all brave undertakings. Nonetheless, Victoria Hendry has taken the plunge and succeeded in achieving these aspects in her novel The Last Tour of Archie Forbes. Against the backdrop of the city of Edinburgh, described Read More
The Revenant by Alejandro González Iñárritu, director of Birdman, chronicles the saga of a nineteenth century frontiersman played by Leonardo DiCaprio who struggles against the elements in his quest for revenge. The majority of the film deals with the unforgiving brutality and violence inside the world these characters inhabit, justified by its focus on survival Read More
Irreverence isn’t a tone I often expect of documentaries, but it’s one that perfectly describes Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD. Detailing the history of Britain’s celebrated science fiction comic book, 2000 AD, the film aims to capture the subversive, almost anarchic quality of its inception in the late ‘70s, drawing explicit connections to the Read More
History repeating itself… The advertising blurb announced that thirty years after the defeat of the Galactic Empire, the galaxy faces a new threat from the First Order: Supreme Commander Snoke and (a wannabe Vader) Kylo Ren. To compare Star Wars: The Force Awakens with Star Wars: A New Hope is perhaps unfair but I can’t Read More
Steven Spielberg’s films, with their interest in uplifting character arcs and nostalgic portraits of the past, are often criticised as overly sentimental and nostalgic. Bridge of Spies does little to dissuade this criticism. Its Cold War political narrative is equally as interested in the story of James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks), a fundamentally good person Read More