Although Any Other Branch is Ivy Page’s debut collection, her work is already much anthologized and is well-published in numerous respected journals. Additionally, she is the founder and editor of Organs of Vision and Speech Magazine. Perhaps tellingly, her dedication to “my best beloved, Stephen & for my girls …” opens up a highly moving Read More
This anthology, Where Rockets Burn Through, houses some familiar names along with a small host of rising names, all of whom make good strong poems. It has to be said, though, that on the whole the poems are parasitic on sci-fi, rather than symbionts of that genre. Strangely, the collection can even offer Malene Engelund’s Read More
Visual artist and poet Helen Ivory’s fourth collection makes a statement which appears to ink its colours strongly on her arrestingly beautiful cover. Her series of poems “tries to understand how a girl could grow up to be the woman living in Bluebeard’s house.” Arranged chronologically, the significantly longer section, Part One,examines that life prior Read More
Paul Kingsnorth has had an admirable and varied career. He has been a peace observer in Mexico, worked in an orangutan rehabilitation centre in Borneo, been the deputy editor of The Geologist, and has been a journalist at The Independent. Whilst holding these positions, he has also published two non-fiction books and seen his poetry Read More
Stuart Kelly is a literary journalist and critic with a formidable reputation for his innovative thought on literary and cultural matters, not only in Scotland, but throughout Britain. He has judged the Man-Booker Prize, the Granta Best Young Novelists of the Year and is one of the judges for the 2014 Dundee Book Prize. He Read More
The Circle is Dave Eggers’ fifth novel, and charts the story of Mae Holland, an able but unexceptional college graduate, plucked from small town existence by Annie, her (ruthless and exceptional) former roommate. Annie holds a highflying post with ‘The Circle’, a Palo Alto search and social media company well on its way to global Read More
With four well received novels under his belt, and praise from the likes of Ian Rankin and Irvine Welsh, physicist turned-author Doug Johnstone returns with his latest offering Gone Again. A psychological thriller in two distinct halves, the reader is immediately engaged by his/her proximity to the protagonist’s emotions, and drawn further in by a Read More
Rebecca Goss’ second collection, Her Birth, carefully considers the process of grieving the loss of a child. In isolation, each poem can be read as an individual portrait of a sincere maternal sentiment; however, considered as a whole, the collection presents a chronological account of the trauma and subsequent acceptance by a mother who has Read More
Russell Jones has worked hard in recent years to bring the sub-genre of Science-Fiction poetry into the mainstream, culminating in his editing of the 2012 anthology Where Rockets Burn Through, published by Penned in The Margins. This ground-breaking anthology harnessed a diverse range of poets and poetic themes, unified by a fascination with the science Read More
The Purgatory Press/After The End is a book of two parts, which skillfully contributes to the tradition of narrative innovation in the contemporary short story. The first section, “The Purgatory Press”, is a novella made up of fictional entries in the catalogue of a now-defunct publishing house, Purgatory Press. The second half of the work,” Read More