There is a stark, polarising beauty in Winter nights. The cold air makes the warmth shine all the brighter. Rhiannon Hooson’s Goliat follows this style of beauty and intrigue, illuminating its subjects through visual and lyrical contrast. The collection pulls the reader into a diverse array of striking landscapes. These places are as much the focus as the people who occupy them, twisting the narratives around complex histories and unique physical features that have moulded them….
The latest exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts combines striking photography, film, and sound to form a reflection on how landscapes and bodies act as conduits for memory. As Williams explores the physicality of record-keeping and the act of self-portraiture, we see the tenuous strings that bind us to physical spaces and moments in time. Every act of recollection is in itself the creation of a memory, a new connection that has ties to both the past and the present….
Banner-maker, community artist and textile curator, Clare Hunter won the Saltire First Book Award for her debut work, Threads of Life (2019), which became Waterstone’s Scottish Book of the Month and a Radio 4 Book of the Week. Embroidering Her Truth continues this historical thread, weaving readers through episodes in Mary Stuart’s life, with an intricate examination of embroideries, tapestries, and textiles, and the subliminal messages these held.
James Connor Patterson’s first collection, Bandit Country, begins with an epigraph from Douglas Dunn which expresses a desire to ‘become a landmark’. In a sense, this too is Paterson’s aim, in his inventive collection of poems that bring voice to Northern Ireland’s ‘ceasefire generation’.
The collection displays a complexity of the language(s) employed, the rhythmic vernaculars of Ulster Scots, the cadence of the Northern Irish phraseology, and an English language heavily peppered with literary referencing; they all combine, pluralistic and porous, blending from one to the next, stitching different tongues together and showing, to use Dunn’s words again, what it is to be ‘an example of being part of a place.’
Jemma Borg’s latest collection of poetry, Wilder, is a revelation and a delight. I have not read her poetry before. I was drawn to her book because of its title, Wilder, with its dual reference to the old English—‘wilde’ from the Germanic weald meaning open field and wild as in bewilder. I have read much informative and beautiful writing from men about wilding and rewilding; however, when a writer is acknowledging their own internal ‘wild’ and its place within the natural world, the feminine gendered gaze has a particular attraction.
Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s Quiet engages with the ordinary and extra-ordinary lives of black women in ways that are life-enhancing but which also doesn’t duck the tragedies of discrimination and social injustices. In seeking an imaginative sanctum that isn’t hostage to how black people are violated, othered or marginalised, Quiet undertakes a difficult balancing act.
The working poet is required to remain on duty, ready for the moment when they are inspired or moved to write. In the case of Yomi Sode, this role is more proactive, requiring the poet to actively sift the airwaves and social media in search of those who wish to ignore, belittle or simply redact the spoken and written experience of black lives. This is a draining but necessary responsibility, and one which Yomi Sode takes seriously in his collection Manorism in which he rails against the slave trade, white privilege, the scandal of Grenfell and Police brutality.
If the title Ephemeron conjures insignificant transience, that would be a misreading. Fiona Benson’s most recent collection examines the fragile, the momentary, the nearly unseen, all of which merit observation, understanding, and a permanent record.
Divided into four parts with seemingly disparate subject-matter, ‘Insect Love Songs’, ‘Boarding-School Tales’, ‘Translations from the Pasiphaë’ and ‘Daughter Mother’, the poet uncovers interconnections between them. The subtlety of that structuring and sequencing feat is remarkable.
Dundee Rep TheatreUntil 31st Dec 2022 It is impossible to look at some fairy tales and not see them through the lens Disney has placed on them. And Cinderella is one of those fairy tales one simply can’t get away from. We see forms of it everywhere, but they always tell the same story. Thankfully, Read More
England’s Green is Zaffar Kunial’s second poetry collection. Everything about England in our cultural subconscious is intimated beautifully in these two words; the reader knows intuitively that within these pages there will be a world of exploration on that theme. Kunial’s previous collection, ‘Us’, was shortlisted for many poetry prizes, and was highly praised for its ‘ability to find meaning and symbolism in the hearth and home’. This collection undoubtedly sustains that investigation into the meaning of ‘home’.