My first response to And She Was (that’s a Talking Heads’ track) is vindicated by the inclusion of a quote from that very song in the frontispiece – “The world was moving, she was right there with it” – very fitting for this collection’s tone and pace. Sarah Corbett has written a remarkable book, which Read More
An award winning journalist, Marian Pallister is based in Argyll. Her mother inherited cottages which were ‘drowned’ for the reservoir in the Cruachan area, binding her family to this location and community. Her previous works often focus on Argyll and the socio-economic and political changes which have affected this area. It is, then, informed by Read More
“A ‘companion’ piece rather than a sequel’, Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins moves from the perspective of Ursula Todd in the critically acclaimed and highly popular Life After Life to that of Ursula’s beloved younger brother Teddy. Having expected not to have survived his stint as a bomber pilot in the Second World War, Read More
A debut draped in drama and dark family secrets, Sarah Armstrong’s The Insect Rosary is far more exciting than the simple cover would suggest. The novel is set in Northern Ireland, in 1982, at the time of The Troubles. Although the historical significance contributes to the unsettling tone of the novel, this is a mere Read More
In all honesty, when choosing which Eliot Prize shortlisted collection to review, I decided upon Not in This World simply because Tracey Herd lives in Dundee; I felt a real curiousity about the work of this local poet. Soon, I discovered that Herd’s connections with not only the city but with the University run deep: Read More
at the time of writing the boundless joy of a pre-walk dog is suggesting itself in the writer’s chest (“immortelle”) Beauty/Beauty is Rebecca Perry’s first book-length poetry collection. The London-based poet sculpts a world from snapshots of memories and eulogies, written sensitively from the female perspective. As the title suggests, Beauty/Beauty is a mirror, offering Read More
It’s nobody’s fault that shifting tectonic plates once split this kingdom, blessed one half at birth with coal and a black economy. And who is to blame if fortunes also shift, slide, luck gets all mined out; only shadows are left now and dust trapped in the fault-lines. @Eleanor Livingstone
As a poet who often courts the epithet, “a poet for the people”, one would think this phrase would perhaps daunt an artist as far into his career as the 77-year-old Les Murray. This is not the case, as can be seen clearly in Waiting for the Past, the prolific poet’s fourth full-length collection in Read More
Is that love on the tip of the tongue of the river, never too wounded to care for the wounded, singing the single-flowered clubrush to sleep like a prodigal daughter returned from the deep, raising the black-hearted ravens as though they were kith, having a fling, now and then, with an agate or freshwater fish Read More
The Observances of Kate Miller’s debut collection are more than observations, more than watchfulness; they are imbued with an appreciation of ritual, whether human or, in nature, a ritual-like patterning. Such is her acute scrutiny that for much of the time the poet erases herself, willingly passive in a world intensely experienced. The first two Read More