The Wreck of the Fathership

The Wreck of the Fathership is the seventh poetry collection from W.N. Herbert. Herbert was Dundee’s inaugural Makar from 2013-2018. This collection has its roots firmly in Dundee, but calls upon themes, techniques and artists the world over, and overflows with hidden meanings and metaphysics. Herbert’s Fathership is an outpouring of emotion, especially of grief that threatens to drown the reader but steered by such poetic genius that no such disaster occurs. The turbulent contents are handled tightly, deftly.

Caught in between: A Creative Folio by Mareth Burns

Coming/Going The girl could step off the train, go round by the post office and the pubs, climb the hill and find herself next to the road between two grassy verges. And if she wanted to, she could peel away the layers; from daffodils, to snow, to burnt leaves and watch the video tape rewind. Read More

A-Z of Dundee

Have you noticed Dundee audiences love to laugh? The Rep Ensemble’s second offering in their twentieth anniversary production line-up caters perfectly to this characteristic. A-Z of Dundee is a brilliant evening of tales, jests, history, and even a quiz, during which there are plenty of opportunities to giggle, chortle, chuckle, and guffaw. Opening with an Read More

Tay Bridge

Can a play about an historic tragedy entertain?  Hearing great praise for Tay Bridge, I was intrigued to find out, and take pleasure in reporting that Dundee Repertory Theatre has managed to deliver. Despite being the first ‘in-house’ production I’ve seen at the Rep, previous shows had already set a high bar– and this play Read More

V&A Dundee: The poetry of buildings, the poetry of objects

At this year’s spring exhibition of Danh Voh’s photographs and sculptural installations of found and preserved objects at the Guggenheim in New York, I felt, viscerally, for the first time what had merely been an abstract idea: the rhythm of buildings, the poetry of objects, the stories that reside within, the narrative webs they are Read More

Patterns of Migration: An Exhibition of Illustrations by Laura Darling

When illustrator, Laura Darling, took a part-time job at the Dundee International Women’s Centre to support her practice as an illustrator, she had no idea that her experience would inspire her first solo exhibition. The illustrations on display at Verdant Works are a response to the stories she heard at the centre and a tribute Read More

Essay Fragments

Stranger he sits on the very edge of the bench legs crossed hands on his knees fingers strongly knitted together his whole body bends to the front it seems as he was just about to get up and go but forgot about it his hair is grey almost white his skin is tired nose off-colour Read More

Ed’s Dead

Deadlier than the Male, the tabloids said. They didn’t know the half of it. When reviewing Russel McLean’s previous novel Cry Uncle,  I used the following sentence, “The gritty and honest narration has a truly Scottish attitude.” This is also true, perhaps even more so, of his newest book Ed’s Dead. McLean has already established Read More

The Life Span of Utopias

Sam Gonçalves DJCAD Masters Show, 2016    At our current juncture in the history of Dundee, we would seem to be on the cusp of something special with the V&A museum, which has already precipitated a wash of investment and improvement to the waterfront. Sam Gonçalves’ film is a timely investigation into the longevity, and afterlife, Read More