Capturing the experiences of womanhood with currency for our time may require an acknowledgement of contrast, notably between the furiously public domain of the #metoo campaign and its associated high-profile sexual assault cases, and the hidden realities of motherhood and female domesticity. Fiona Benson’s second collection of poetry, Vertigo & Ghost, delivers a duality that Read More
Have you noticed Dundee audiences love to laugh? The Rep Ensemble’s second offering in their twentieth anniversary production line-up caters perfectly to this characteristic. A-Z of Dundee is a brilliant evening of tales, jests, history, and even a quiz, during which there are plenty of opportunities to giggle, chortle, chuckle, and guffaw. Opening with an Read More
Deaf Republic begins with a gunshot. As an innocent deaf boy falls to the ground, the townspeople choose silence over the sound of a child’s body hitting the street, a sound that would be filled with pain and injustice: ‘The sound we do not hear lifts the gulls off the water’. The rest of the Read More
Sunshine streams in through the huge windows of Perth Concert Hall where Clare Hunter and I meet to talk about her book, Threads of Life, a History of the World through the Eye of a Needle. Recently published, this is a history of the social impact and political meaning of textiles. Armed with coffee and Read More
Do you ever read the last page of a book first? I don’t know why I did with this book, because I wouldn’t usually. Yet I am so glad I did. I know nothing about needlework but this is how the final paragraph begins, ‘Sewing is a way to mark our existence on cloth: patterning Read More
If the intriguing title of this book invites you to expect something different, then read on and you won’t be disappointed. Dame Professor Sue Black, as one of the country’s leading anatomists and forensic anthropologists, is no stranger to death; her thoughts on death and its inevitability, which has featured in both her personal and Read More
Can a play about an historic tragedy entertain? Hearing great praise for Tay Bridge, I was intrigued to find out, and take pleasure in reporting that Dundee Repertory Theatre has managed to deliver. Despite being the first ‘in-house’ production I’ve seen at the Rep, previous shows had already set a high bar– and this play Read More
Raymond Antrobus has chosen the epigraph for his first collection wisely: ‘There is no telling what language is inside the body’ (Robin Coste Lewis). Antrobus explores his experiences with late-diagnosed Deafness, mixed heritage experience (Antrobus is Jamacian British), and an alcoholic parent; but beneath these concerns is ultimately his passion for communication. There’s something that Read More
On April 15th,1989, 96 lives were lost in the infamous Hillsborough Stadium Disaster, when two pens filled with fans became fatally overcrowded during a match. Although the cause of the tragedy was originally attributed to drunkenness and football hooliganism, a second inquiry in 2016 painted a picture of negligence, incompetence and corruption. 30 years on Read More
Not rivers, towers of blood. (‘Sentence’) In 1981, Glasgow School of Art’s Ceramics Department and its famous dances, were housed in the Haldane building, the city’s shambolic former police horse stables. This may have been a long way from New Cross Road, the tragedy, the official and media indifference in its aftermath and the lasting Read More