We shared Octoberfuls tasty with appletea under tangerine trees. I asked what he did. Ah The Royal Bank pays me, but I source old harpsichords which I restore. Some need me for years. I play them then pass them to others who love them. My passion. That’s who I am. So here’s to that man Read More
Oh Heart of the Web, Heart of Bracken, give me the strength to persevere. (“Walking the Wood”) For a reader who loves the mystery and fairy-tale quality of wild forest lands, the nature of Anna Robinson’s second collection, Into the Woods, is pure food for the creative soul. Set in imaginary woodlands in Read More
A woman, a certain kind of woman, loves a red dress. She seizes upon it; she is not afraid. She selects the dress from rack upon rack of dresses, takes it up in her hands, in her arms, tries it on and keeps that dress for her own. This woman, this certain kind of woman, Read More
Peter Riley’s 18th poetry publication, Due North, is a poem of twelve chapters that builds a larger story with roots deeply imbued in movement. Whether it be a search for work or finding inner happiness, the poet is concerned with the restless nature of the human mind and the displacement of those who wander without Read More
“A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves” is the first line in Caitlin Doughty’s memoir. It evokes interest and revulsion in exactly the way the author intended, and it’s a theme that is carried throughout. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is an aptly titled creation by a writer who describes herself in the Read More
“My body is a series of bodies: / now & before” writes Matthew Siegel, in “The electric body”, and there is perhaps no better way to introduce Blood Work. His collection addresses themes of the physical self primarily, dealing with illness (hospital visits, and relationships), but also features occasional portraits of a broken family. For Read More
There is something deeply wrong with this book. The problem is not the subject matter. The Internet Is Not the Answer is an attack on the way a crude ideology of “winner-takes-all” capitalism is shaping the Internet today through companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, and, more revealingly, through newer companies like Instagram, Uber Read More
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