I read these words over the shoulder of someone reading it the other day on the tube: “A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.” Franz Kafka. It made me laugh, and the person who was reading it looked up, and we both smiled at each other. Perhaps that other person was a writer too? Read More
Ned Denny is a London-born author/critic whose work has been published in various magazines and publications along. Unearthly Toys: Poems and Masks combines his previous work with a large number of new poems to comprise a very diverse and eclectic book. Spread throughout the collection are many poems that are directly inspired by, or are Read More
Day One When I was informed that our very first essay conference was to take place two days before my graduation, I’ll admit I was dubious. Such anticipation, such enthusiasm, would surely exhaust itself and leave me slogging on stage with about as much energy as an old sloth, overwhelmed with ideas, questions and a Read More
In a remarkable extension of thought, The Book of the Peony buds, expands and lets fall astounding petals: prose poems and haiku invoking an infinite, unattainable peony. The peony is allegorical. It is approached with the mind. It is the illusory peony of separation, of birth and death. Or, it is the shimmering unity beyond Read More
Phoebe Power’s Shrines of Upper Austria beckons to the wayfarers. An amalgamation of poetry and prose, the collection is a seamless combination of imagery and narration. With its vocal fragments and lyricism, it is both political and perspicacious. Power’s Shrines of Upper Austria reads like the “humming” of a relic folk tune, remembered, re-sung, and Read More
displays of pride, the concupiscent eye bent inward w/ súch deep longing. When readers omit a poem’s title, I’m perturbed. Poets fret over titles. Not just their wording. Should it hold to the left, be centred? Capitalisation? If there is superscription, are italics necessary? Are endnotes too hidden? Are footnotes overly close and distracting? Don’t Read More
Picking up Paolozzi Revealed, I did expect a window into the private life of this creative titan. Instead, this summary of a Masterclass run by the renowned sculptor reads more like a research paper on creativity. But maybe that is indeed, in itself, revealing of Paolozzi, this book seemingly an embodiment of the creative process. In Read More
Ali Bacon is a graduate of the University of St Andrews and worked as a librarian at the Bodleian in Oxford. Her first novel, Kettle of Fish, was published by Thornberry in 2012. In the Blink of an Eye is set in Victorian Edinburgh and charts the fortunes of two pioneering photographers, Robert Adamson and Read More
“The hardest thing of all is to see what is really there” (J A Baker) I clatter down the stairs of the Tower Extension at the University of Dundee, heart pounding inside my chest, hoping that my voice will come back to me and my nerves will disappear like the rolling haar on the Read More
Imogen Hermes Gower’s debut novel, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, is a beautifully written slice of Georgian life that depicts the fortunes of a widower merchant, an ambitious courtesan, and a mermaid. Gower’s London is intricate and robust; she uses her background in archaeology and anthropology to breathe life into the city through the smallest Read More