I had never left home before. Aside from holidays, I hadn’t lived anywhere that wasn’t Dundee. Last summer, I did at the age of twenty-five what most people do at eighteen; I moved to Leeds, into student accommodation for my work placement. I was forced to make a home for myself in an unfamiliar place. Read More
The way we are forced to work around the pandemic unfortunately applies to the launching of poetry publications also; as Rachel Long’s My Darling from the Lions was published at the start of August, chances for public appearances, speaking and promoting her work are all but whipped away. The publication must speak for itself. Long Read More
In his marvellous essay on writing about 9/11, ‘Can poetry console a grieving public?’, Mark Doty sets out the difficulties of writing about public tragedy. Can one bear witness to ‘the inchoate stuff of experience’ ─ intensely felt private pain or even anger ─ and yet also keep faith with ‘language’s project of discovering and Read More
Not rivers, towers of blood. (‘Sentence’) In 1981, Glasgow School of Art’s Ceramics Department and its famous dances, were housed in the Haldane building, the city’s shambolic former police horse stables. This may have been a long way from New Cross Road, the tragedy, the official and media indifference in its aftermath and the lasting Read More
George Mpanga, aka George The poet, is a street savvy Cambridge-educated 23 year old from North West London. His debut collection, Search Party, espouses a blend of spoken word and rap which explores life in the capital’s inner city housing estates, of which he also has much experience. Arguably, not since Gil Scot Heron has Read More