It’s sad when a word is poisoned by history. The word I’m thinking of is “collaboration.” Is it possible to wash off the wartime smear of sleaze and shame that this perfectly good word has acquired? What it describes really is something to be proud of, requiring both a clear personal voice and a generosity Read More
Get rid of words and meaning, and there is still poetry. Yang Wanli (1127-1206) Firstly, Newcastle University and Bloodaxe Books must be congratulated for instigating and publishing this innovative series of lectures. Quantum Poetics gathers three given by former Welsh National Poet Gwyneth Lewis. Though highly engaging and accessible, these are not for the dabbler. Read More
Philip Gross dealt with death and ageing in his 2013 collection, Later, and with elemental forces in the T.S. Eliot Prize winning The Water Table, published in 2009. Love Songs of Carbon unites these interests in an extended contemplation of the molecule as the building block of life. In Love Songs, the ageing process is Read More
Published under the Faber New Poets initiative and funded by Arts Council England, this is Rachel Curzon’s first collection of published poems. The poet, born in Leeds in 1978, studied English at Oxford and now teaches at a boys’ school in Hampshire. She won the Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and her poems have been Read More
Since his six years as Rector during the 1990s, Stephen Fry has had many kind things to say about Dundee University. Given that the University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1995 and named its student association bar after his novel The Liar, the feeling is clearly mutual. It is no surprise then that the Read More
Queen of Katwe, directed by Mira Nair of Monsoon Wedding fame, tells the real-life story of chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi. Growing up in the Katwe slums of Uganda, she meets chess coach Robert Katende and discovers she has a talent that could offer her a way out of poverty. So far, so rags-to-riches. But this Read More
The Parting Glass is a collection of 14 sonnets by Northern Irish poet, Neil Young, long resident in Scotland. True to its title, each sonnet is a farewell to a beloved family member or a friend, a toast to memories – private and public, and a nod to the present that will soon be lost. Read More
(UK/France, 2016) 28th Oct – 10th Nov, DCA Ken Loach’s new film I, Daniel Blake has been repeatedly compared to his 1966 work Cathy Come Home. Cathy aired on the BBC and managed to completely transform the public perception of homelessness, even leading to the founding of the charity Shelter. Does I, Daniel Blake have Read More
(UK, 2016) 31st October – 3rd November, DCA Originally aired on BBC 4 in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Mark Cousins’ Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise is now touring small cinemas across the UK. Cousins, perhaps best known for his ambitious fifteen-hour long project The Story of Film: Read More
Exhibition and Ritual, 13th October 2016. Buskers Bar, Ward Road, Dundee. The Girls Will Be Beuys exhibition has been created at the invitation of The Collective Responsible For, an international artists’ collective founded in Dundee and concerned with making art with conceptual integrity and feeling. The collective is inspired by the work of Joseph Beuys, Read More