The Merchant of Feathers is Jamaican poet Tanya Shirley’s second full collection, but she has also been anthologised by Kei Miller in New Caribbean Poetry (2007), one of the eight poets “in whose hands the future of Caribbean poetry… [is] secure”. Divided into three sections, the first, “The Alphabet of Shame” delves into childhood memory, Read More
Gill McEvoy’s pamphlet The First Telling is a journey through the terror and shock of rape which leads to a rediscovery of strength and of hope. These poems outline the stages of recovery and chart the narrator’s multi-layered emotional development throughout. Primarily, the first three poems are concerned with the narrator’s misplaced guilt and shame, whilst Read More
This is an edited transcript with headings inserted for ease of reading and navigation. The video of the interview can be accessed by clicking the above image. Lindsay: Well, welcome everybody and it’s a great pleasure to introduce Nell Nelson here today from Happenstance Press. Nell’s a local publisher but also a poet and performer Read More
How did you let him go? With black ink and legalese How did you let him go? It’d be another year before I could vote [.] The first lines of Imagined Sons’ opening poem “A Birthmother’s Catechism” make an uncompromising, direct introduction to Etter’s most recent collection, which explores nearly two decades of pain and Read More
Sounding Grounds is poet, screenwriter and actor Vladimir Lucien’s debut collection. Originally from St. Lucia, Lucien has been previously published in various journals including The Caribbean Review of Books, Wasafiri and Small Axe. His work has also been included in the poetry anthology Beyond Sangre Grande (edited by Cyril Dabydeen), and he has worked as Read More
Carol Rumens, in the Guardian (24 March 2014) reviewed one short poem from this collection and used more words than I have for the whole book. The poem she picked, “Critique of Judgement”, is one of my own favourites because it is deceptively simple, using almost clichéd metaphors and similes but configuring them in a Read More
Sigurður Pálsson is an established poet in his home country of Iceland, having won the Icelandic Literary Prize in 2008. He has built up a considerable reputation in France, which earned him both the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1990, and Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 2007. Read More
On a book tour of his novel about art and war, Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje tells a tale of moral responsibility, an Indian fable of a King who wakes up to find a corpse tied around his neck. Every time the King buries it, and the corpse returns; try as he might to dispose of Read More
Gerrie Fellows is no stranger to poetry, having written four other poetry collections in the past decade. However, having taken a break after Window for a Small Blue Child in 2007, she returns with The Body in Space. Fellows’ new collection explores the poet’s interest in the exploration of human insignificance by its use of Read More
Anglo-Breton poet Claire Trévien’s collection The Shipwrecked House is a bewildering yet heart-wrenching composition of myth, life and loss. In returning to the sea as a central theme, the poet creates a seamless transition from her pamphlet Low-Tide Lottery to this, her newest work. At first, these seemingly disjointed poems appear to follow no coherent Read More