After the success of Denise Riley’s prizewinning elegiac sequence A Part Song, it was with great anticipation that I opened her new collection Say Something Back. As well as being highly regarded as a poet, Riley has also published various academic works of language and Feminist theory. Say Something Back is her first collection since Read More
A midnight court during which only men are invited to speak is where the reader of John O’Donoghue’s Fools & Mad finds herself at this epic poem’s finale. Yet these are no ordinary men, but a jury of twelve poets hand-picked by Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift from Ireland’s literary history. They have been gathered here Read More
Jessie Burton’s debut novel has certainly attracted a lot of attention. One look at the list of awards and recognition the book has received is enough to entice any curious reader. The Miniaturist is also in the process of being translated into thirty-two different languages, an impressive feat for an actress/executive assistant who wrote a Read More
It becomes clear from the very first poem in this collection, that Crib is no light bedtime reading. This sub-sequence of forty poems is a selection from a larger collection of a hundred and eleven poems, written for the poet’s young son and completed on his first birthday. All of these one hundred and eleven Read More