John Berger is a poet, Art critic, playwright and general European polymath. Collected Poems brings together nearly 60 years of work in one English language volume. Enhancing the start of each discrete section are beautiful, understated monotypes by his son, Yves Berger. The volume examines history, emigration, place and love; collectively it contemplates the impact Read More
George Mpanga, aka George The poet, is a street savvy Cambridge-educated 23 year old from North West London. His debut collection, Search Party, espouses a blend of spoken word and rap which explores life in the capital’s inner city housing estates, of which he also has much experience. Arguably, not since Gil Scot Heron has Read More
“We didn’t stand a chance, my siblings and I, when it came to loving tea.” Having dazzled the poetry world with her 2009 debut collection, Furniture (shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize), Lorraine Mariner has returned with an array of diverse and insightful poems Read More
Bande de Filles (Girlhood), written and directed by Céline Sciamma, took awards ceremonies by storm when released last year, and deservedly so. The film has certainly not gone unappreciated, with eleven award nominations, including the Queer Palm and the SACD Prize at Cannes, and six wins, among which were the Special Jury Prize at the Read More
Following on from her previous novel The Midwife’s Daughter, Patricia Ferguson returns to the sleepy Cornish town of Silkhampton to tell the story of both new and also some familiar characters. Set in the early 1930s, the book revolves around three women, all widely different but drawn together by circumstance into a situation which will Read More
Lissa Evans’ fourth novel, Crooked Heart, brings to the table a new story with old bones. Set in World War 2 England, one would expect it to be another historical drama, rife with tales of heroism and loss, of tragedy and hope. As you traverse the pages however, you find humour in the place of Read More
“Hell is other people” Jean-Paul Satre’s famous words permeate the text of Emily St John Mandel’s fourth novel, Station 11, where a virus wiping out 99% of the Earth’s population leads its survivors to realise how alone in the world they can truly be. The story opens with a production of Shakespeare’s King Lear, starring Read More
“We flee like a dragonfly over water, we fight like ten guns, and we be bell to see. Other children go deranged and unpredictable for our love.” Longlisted for the 2015 Baileys’ Prize for Women’s Fiction, this is the third novel by Sandra Newman, who is American-born but resides in England. It may have missed Read More
While the idea of a post-humanist age is a recent concept, the relationship between the human and the natural world that emphasises the enormity, endurance and the significance of the latter isn’t. In Continental Drift, Nancy Gaffield explores the finite and the infinite, with humans beings in the former category and land belonging to the Read More
Bearing in mind the danger of conflating the experiences of an author with those represented in their work, it is striking that the first sentence on Grace McCleen’s website runs as follows: “Grace McCleen was raised in a fundamentalist religion and for most of her life did not have much contact with unbelievers.” Madeline, the Read More