In Muriel Spark’s seventeenth novel, The Only Problem, the rich and secretive Harvey Gotham is holed away in a small cottage in France. He lives with the smallest of comforts, working on a book about the character of Job, from the Book of Job in the Bible. As Spark’s novel unfolds, Harvey’s suffering is likened Read More
Alice Tarbuck’s first pamphlet collection of poetry, Grid, challenges her collection’s title and bends poetry form. In poems of varying lengths, differing tones and metrics, her writing weaves in and out of twenty-first century human nature – exploring time, emotion, people and places. With such mixed themes the collection is difficult to summarise as a Read More
“Sometimes, when I am walking down the King’s Road … and chance to remember the island, immediately all things are possible.” Robinson, Muriel Spark Candia McWilliams’s claim in her introduction to the Birlinn centenary edition of Muriel Spark’s Robinson that she, McWilliams, was reputed at school to have “swallowed a thesaurus”, places her in excellent Read More
Dundee’s Rep brings Levin’s gripping thriller to life with well-executed drama and suspense leaving you wishing that it was more than just two acts. Deathtrap holds the record for the longest-running comedy thriller on Broadway; Ira Levin’s play uses simplicity of character and setting to create a compelling and unexpected piece of work. Described as Read More
Aperture – A space through which light passes in an optical or photographic instrument, especially the variable opening by which light enters a camera. (Oxford Dictionaries | English, 2018) In Aperture, Anna Leahy creates apertures through which she envisions and encapsulates – vessels through which a reader may see light. Her collection seeks to peer Read More
I have one simple expectation of every poetry collection that I’ve ever read or will read: that each poem will connect with others towards a cohesive whole. You can imagine my hesitation when four poems in I realised that Colin Will’s The Night I Danced With Maya failed to meet my criteria. Or did it? Read More
Writer, performer and burlesque artist Vanessa Kisuule is also a winner of over ten slam titles. She has performed at various poetry events and venues and has published two poetry collections – Joyriding the Storm (2014) and A Recipe for a Sorcery (2017). The latter, her most recent collection, uncovers the magical in the ordinary Read More
Rita Ann Higgins’s eleventh poetry collection, Tongulish, pulses with conversation. It is a stroll down the street; the ambience of the spoken word splayed across the page. Conversation is volatile and ever-changing from subject to subject; in much the same way, the poems within the collection cover a plethora of subject matter. It is a Read More
Indisputably, Emily Dickinson’s “Tell it Slant” works, but does her entreatment apply solely to poets? In Rego Retold Owen Lowery has rightly termed his collection “Poems in Response” (my italics). Ekphrastic poetry has many detractors; done badly there is reason for critical disquiet. If we are all in some way telling it slant then any Read More
“Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and dying as on a battlefield.” Memento Mori is Muriel Spark’s third novel and seems, at first, to be a simple mystery novel with a “whodunnit” to be solved. But Spark is Read More