“I’ve said on many occasions that if a poem, once written, is exactly the same as its author first imagined it would be, then it is almost certainly a failure, and that artistic success must always involve a process of transformation.” This is Simon Armitage reflecting on the “almost electrically bright” Snow Stone poem’s lettering Read More
Carolyn Forché’s single-authored 2003 collection, Blue Hour, is reviewed here in advance of her appearance at the StAnza 2015 International Poetry Festival. The eleven poems which make up the collection contemplate remembrance, the transition between life and death, and the effects of war. Above all, it seems to me that Forché is concerned to present Read More
Ahren Warner’s first two collections, Confer and Pretty, may have simple titles but inside the covers you’ll find poems teeming with conceptual and linguistic complexities. Both books demand the reader’s full participation – I found myself conferring not only with Warner’s explanatory endnotes but also with Google to find translations of French and Greek words, Read More
The cover of Sheenagh Pugh’s new collection features a photo of the long shadows of two people, standing on a beach, apparently looking back on their own footsteps. Backdropped by a close-up of round, eroded stones in a blue-grey scale, that opening image accurately reflects the title – Short Days, Long Shadows. Focused on the Read More
Ian Duhig has been, to use Lawrence Sterne’s own phrase, “Shandying about” in Yorkshire for Digressions, his collaboration with artist-printmaker, Philippa Troutman. In 2013, the tercentenary of Sterne’s birth, they set out from Shandy Hall, Coxwold in North Yorkshire where The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy was written, to celebrate Sterne’s great work through Read More
Born in 1968 in Broughty Ferry, Hazel Frew is now Glasgow-based. She has published in various magazines, including Orbis, The Rialto, Poetry Scotland, Fras and New Writing Scotland. Minim is her second poetry selection to be published by the Rack Press, the first being Clockwork Scorpion in 2007. Her first full-length collection, Seahorses, was published Read More
…because he has no highfalutin song to sing, no neat message for the nation. (“Goalkeeper with Cigarette”, 1995) To open up this Simon Armitage retrospective is to delve into a treasure trove of the surreal, the unlikely, the ironic, the laugh-out-loud comic, the darkly humorous and the downright horrific. Above all, it is a delightfully Read More
I was born in the city named after Odysseus and I praise no nation – to the rhythm of snow an immigrant’s clumsy phrases fall into speech. Ilya Kaminsky is an immigrant but in this his first full collection his phrasing is anything but clumsy. Born in Odessa, his family was granted US asylum in Read More
Of late, Tom Pow has been preoccupied with journeys. Astonishingly, he has two full collections out this year, and both have journeys at their heart. In A Wild Adventure Pow traces the life of Thomas Watling, an artist from Dumfries sent to Botany Bay, Australia, convicted of forgery. Atlas of Scotland, with its beautiful cover Read More
If one were to look for extensive fire metaphors in Notes for Lighting a Fire, one would most likely be disappointed. Gerry Cambridge’s first poetry collection in eight years is not so much interested in fire itself, but rather what its origins are, what effects it has, and perhaps most importantly, the consequences of its Read More