Sanah Ahsan (Bloomsbury Poetry, 2024); pbk, £9.99 Sanah Ahsan’s I cannot be good until you say it is a poetry collection of uncompromising vulnerability. Awarded the Out-Spoken Performance Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, the White Review Poet’s Prize and the Bridport Prize, Ahsan’s confrontational and questioning poetry is Read More
Sarah James(Verve Poetry Press, 2022); pbk, £10.99 Thoughtful and haunted, Sarah James’s recent poetry collection, Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic was shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award 2023. It is a playful, biting, and introspective look at life with type one diabetes. James’ skilfully employs both conventional and experimental styles, with page layout and lineation Read More
Yorgos Lanthimos (dir)USA / UK / Ireland, 2023 Poor Things, a continuation of Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s creative collaboration (The Favourite (2018) and Bleat (2022)), is a strange yet intoxicating wonderland, full of soul, humour and sex. An adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name, the film is set in a 19th Read More
Fran Lock(The Poetry Bus, 2023); pbk, £8.50 ‘This human form where I was born, I now repent’. This quote from Pixies ‘Caribou’ sets the tone for Fran Lock’s Hyena!, an intoxicating blend of the melancholic and the apocryphal, a charged, crudely honest, experimental, and intricate exercise in reflection. The collection is dedicated to Scottish poet Read More
Lori & Joe, shortlisted for the 2023 Goldsmith Prize for innovative and experimental novels, is inspired by Amy Arnold’s own walks over the fells and being attentive to her landscape, to her movement, and to her thoughts. The novel is a beautiful representation of the mind’s meandering quality, jumping through a person’s history without warning….
