Do you remember when you were learning to read and it was both difficult and exciting to mouth the next word? Then there’s the thrill of recognition. The simple rhyming title of Vahni Capildeo’s chapbook seas and trees – presented in lowercase sans serif typeface – may take the reader back to those days. One Read More
Sara Hirsch’s debut is a photo album of memories described by a woman not trying to be anyone other than herself. Still Falling is a collection of both rare and everyday encounters which are often shocking, and always personal. The title itself suggests a continuation of mistake making and learning, rather than a Wonder Woman Read More
Annabel was entirely aware of the image-making process in every phase. She did not expect this personal image to last long in the public mind, for she intended to play other parts than that of the suppressed tiger, now that she was becoming an established star. Muriel Spark’s The Public Image was shortlisted for Read More
As the centenary of Dame Muriel Spark’s birth approaches, we begin to revisit the wonderful work of one of Scotland’s finest writers. Muriel Spark 100, a year-long literary programme of events, will be taking place throughout the UK, in celebration of Spark’s life and revered writing. To mark the occasion, Polygon recently republished her twenty-two Read More
In a mizzling rain that brings darkness to the red heartstone of the city, I set out to meet David Kinloch to interview him about his Ars Poetica in light of his recent publication In Search of Dustie-Fute, shortlisted only this morning for the Saltire Poetry Prize. We have arranged to meet in “Tinderbox”, Ingram Read More
Imagine the poet as a sandwich-board man, with his daily routine of spreading the word. Dennis O’Driscoll was such a poet – plain-speaking, astute, wary of ornament – his poetry pronounces ‘every day’ on the board at the front, and ‘death’ at the back, as he walks away. Born in Tipperary, on New Year’s Day Read More
The children will play with the Sea they will learn addition from the corpses piled on the sidewalks subtraction from decapitated trees[.] Such wounds, remembered even after the page turns and the book ends up on the shelf, are so common in Khoury-Ghata’s work that they shape their own reality, giving the readers a new Read More
Has David Morley really “cast off the worlds of myth and magical fable” as the back blurb of this collection suggests? His shape-shifting, shift-shaping Romani folk tales are what has made his work so wonderfully distinctive so far. He won the 2015 Ted Hughes Award for The Invisible Gift, his Selected Poems. Is this collection Read More
Good poetry, as Robert Crawford said about John Ashbery’s word craft, “levitates language” from the page. As I read and re-read Miriam Nash’s first book-length collection of poetry, All the Prayers in the House, I am struck with a similar leavening in the composition of the poems as prayers and reading them aloud as “PRAY-ers”. Read More
(UK, 2017) 12th – 25th January, DCA Jowly and squat in stature, Winston Churchill is one of the most recognisable British figures of the twentieth century, a status which draws extra scrutiny to those who would portray him. However, Gary Oldman’s outstanding portrayal of the Prime Minister is nothing short of a masterclass; he perfects Read More