cos cheum nach gabh tilleadh For some, Robin Robertson’s book-length narrative poem is “unclassifiable”. Shortlisted for awards invariably dominated by prose, it is epic in both scale and ambition. Resisting the strict fit of epic form, its protagonist (the aptly-named Walker) is overly human for deification; its netherworld trips, earthly hells. Remembered paradises are also Read More
Find as far inland as Kintyre can allow, map back to an almost-anywhere dot. Out of seasight. Still, on clouded nights, watch Rathlin’s lit pattern censer past. A little industrial structure. One bog-footed cave built for burning. All rabbit shit, trotting-in lost sheep, broken curves open to host brackening rain. A dripped-on Alice, shrunk on Read More
Of rain and rushing water, dense with coils of razor wire masquerading as weeds. The fish were machine guns with fins and barrels that ruddered through the swift current like mermaids’ tails, so you could not tell who they were really pointed at, and who would die when they were fired. Perhaps the quotation above Read More
Time, which is itself encased in stunning script: Baikal poured into a single shell or glass receptacle. Belfast folk aver there was nothing wrong with the Titanic when she left their slipway. As that city’s inaugural laureate Sinéad Morrissey arrives in Newcastle, her most recent collection On Balance opens by contemplating the fated liner’s Read More
[S]ongs made dearer when gone than ever they were, sung by heroes, animal spirits[.] There has been a need for this volume for some time, a need perhaps fully established at Riley’s Light, the 2015 Helen Mort-organised Leeds University conference. Indeed many luminaries, Vahni Capildeo, Andrew McMillan, Ian Duhig and more have shared that journey. Read More
her black door like an omen […] As the title implies, Buried Music resonates with losses, being filled with many kinds of grief. The collection addresses bereavement (especially that of his father) principally, but also it considers the poet’s own challenged and diminishing health. For all that, Buried Music mines the quirkiness of Read More
Hwæt! Whether you take that iconic, still-contentious word as an exclamation, an exhortation, or accept Heaney’s gently Hibernian “So”, whatever aspects of the Anglo Saxon epic you unravel in Leásungspell , from the first Bob Beagrie alerts you that all is not as it seems. Huisht, lads, haad ya gobs [.] Set in Northumbria, 657 Read More
Sister, it’s time to trace the stories on your skin. Slick our myths across your chest. Open your wounds. Begin [.] Amazon charts Northumbrian poet Catherine Ayres’ journey through breast cancer, a mastectomy and the fallout for herself her family, friends and relationships. Normally, I avoid reviewing friends’ work, but I have made an exception Read More
The taut neologism of the title, under Paul Klee’s glorious painting “The Fruit, 1932”, in tandem with the titular poem and the opening of “Ultragreen”, convinced me I was about to read a collection devoted to the study of synathesia. I was very wrong, despite that first section’s immersion in colour which fades slowly into Read More