Dannie Abse, poet and GP, read at Dundee University at least once, in the early 1980s. He was an imposing figure, and a fine reader. He exuded modest energy and drive, and quiet achievement. Now that he has entered upon his tenth decade and has suffered major losses, the keenest that of his beloved wife Read More
Many people go to the movies nowadays to get away from everyday life- they don’t want to be reminded of poverty, mundane routine and one’s own inevitable aging. This leads me to believe that not a lot of people will go to see Alexander Payne’s Nebraska as it is full of these themes, and yet, Read More
So here’s the rub: his salt, your skin. He flays you first, then kneads it in, (Wetsalter) Drysalter, a purveyor of powders, dyes, colours and cures, also puns providently on “Psalter”. There is considerable challenge in both aspects of the title. Perhaps curiously, Michael Roberts describes his poems forming as individual entities which later shape Read More
When dealing with the subject of young people there’s an awful temptation for filmmakers to produce a feature which is “cool”. The most up to date music coupled with some flashy visuals and hot young stars make an inviting prospect for audiences which normally wouldn’t have any interest in the film’s subject. Kill Your Darlings Read More
Lesley McDowell has exceeded all expectations with this sensitive, intelligent and thoroughly researched gothic novel: the story of Mary Shelley’s friend Isabella Baxter Booth and her husband David Booth as they come into contact with various forms of “madness” and the ruthless and ambitious Dr. Alexander Balfour. Although this is an intriguing tale of ghosts Read More
Sugar coated and wrapped up in fluff, Saving Mr Banks is a wonderful portrayal of the magic of Walt Disney and of the determination necessary to fulfil the promise of Disney to his daughters that he would adapt P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins for the screen. Mrs Travers, a formidable woman who refused for twenty years Read More
Maurice Riordan’s fourth collection is one of deceptive complexity. Read in isolation, individual poems such as “The Noughties” may seem overly brief or inconsequentially anecdotal, but this is a collection which must be read as an organised whole. Clear thematic threads are formed around ideas of modernity, technology, memory and personal loss, but these strands Read More
The Darkest Dreams exhibition is situated in the Lamb Gallery on the first floor of Dundee University Tower Building. It features works from a variety of artists gathered together by Dundee University Fine Art Collection. The artworks on display date from around the 1960s’ to more contemporary times and include contributions from Dundee University graduates, Read More
1939 was an excellent vintage for Northern Irish poetry as both Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley were born in that year. Indeed, in some sense, their verse is not dissimilar in that it is never pretentious, and there is much to be said in favour of poetry that somehow manages to imbue everyday occurrences with Read More
Moniza Alvi’s latest collection, At the Time of Partition, frames a narrative of what “might have taken place” at the time of the partition of India and Pakistan. The poems, detailing the movement of her father’s family from Ludhiana to Lahore in the newly formed Pakistan, combine to produce an overarching tale of political failure Read More