When Clare Best was asked by her dying father to help him write his memoir, she took the brave decision of using that process to examine her own, deeply painful past. By interweaving transcripts of interviews with her father, descriptions of cine films made by him and her own memories of events, The Missing List Read More
Pamphlets are a marvellous way into poetry publishing for many emergent poets; currently some very challenging, innovative work is appearing in that form. Scotland’s own HappenStance (which has also published Clare Best) has rightly won awards for its beautiful work in this area, and Frogmore Press also create some excellent examples. Generally, it’s a slightly Read More
Clare Best’s first collection, Excisions, opens with a sequence entitled ‘Matryoshka’ (“nested Russian dolls”) about the death of her parents, and feelings of grief and memory. Best’s poems, which have an intensity and physicality about them, include arresting descriptions of the body, as for example in “Stitch”, My grandmother knew about seams- her abdomen ruched Read More