Cooperation and selfless behaviour appear to be obvious and necessary characteristics of the human condition, but are they merely enlightened self-interest in disguise? David Sloan Wilson’s new book, Does Altruism Exist?, is a vehicle which promotes his views on the evolution of selflessness, especially, but not exclusively, within human communities. It is a topic of Read More
Back cover blurbs may be accurate but they can also be misleading. Loop of Jade is described as an exploration “of a dual heritage” – Chinese and British – a “journeying back… in search of her roots”. My heart sank a little. Without diminishing the importance of such endeavours, the intervening three decades of identity Read More
Robert Crawford’s biography is probably the best account so far of how The Waste Land came to be written, and what resources it drew upon. This is not to treat the poem teleologically, as though Eliot had always been working towards it. Rather, the biography simply acknowledges (not least by its subtitle) that Eliot would Read More
physical is Andrew McMillan’s debut collection following publications of his work in numerous prestigious magazines and anthologies such as London Review of Books, Modern Poetry in Translation and The Rialto. These poems are personal and moving works, and as the title suggests, they are focused for the most part on the body – exploring its Read More
The sea has reversed its name. It will return; but for now, withdraws to its dreaming pool, and leaves things alone. All night it heeds the moon’s rhetoric, the suasive darkness heavy from above and from below. Its heart is grave and has depth and breadth to think of, remembering a time when, unpopulated, it Read More
Mona Arshi presents her debut collection Small Hands, described as “the slow detonation of grief after her brother’s death.” However, it soon becomes clear that death (and its aftermath) is only one of several themes to emerge from the book. At first, she offers such gems as “My Mother’s Hair” and “The Daughters”. Here she Read More
Ciarán Carson, one of this year’s contenders for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, has written over twenty works of poetry, memoir, translations and fiction. His poetry collections include Belfast Confetti (1990), which won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry; First Language: Poems (1994), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize and Breaking Read More
This is the twelfth poetry collection from Pulitzer Prize winner, Paul Muldoon, named by the TLS as “the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War”. Born in 1951 in Co. Armagh, Muldoon studied at Queens University, but moved to the US in 1980, where he is Howard G B Clark Professor in Read More
I wore out my youth first, and glad I did. How would My dress be newer now If I had played safer? (from Song of the Woman of Breare, translated by Ní Chuilleanáin), 9th Century Old Irish) The cover describes Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s “most recent excavation of memory and examination of time (and timelessness […]) Read More
The worst injury is feeling you don’t belong so much to you – (from “VII”) In a way that sounds obtuse and slightly absurd, I felt unworthy of reviewing this collection upon my first reading. A young Scottish white man forming opinions on the effectiveness of a middle-aged Jamaican-American black woman’s writings on racism (with Read More