– Reviewed by Jessica Traynor – ‘Dazzle ships’ were WWI ships camouflaged with bright trompe l’oeil patterns designed to bewilder the enemy. Isabel Galleymore’s debut pamphlet has an accordingly fractured perspective, zooming in and panning out to dizzying, illuminating effect. Dazzle Ship heralds the arrival of an idiosyncratic new voice, and is full of dense, intricate poems.…
– Reviewed by Bethany W. Pope – If a book of poetry leaves you totally unchanged – if you think ‘that’s a good image’ while reading, but the poems all seem to blur together five minutes after you’ve turned the last page – the book is ultimately a failure. Unfortunately, the current culture seems to produce a great many books that…
– Reviewed by James O’Leary – Rachel Mennies’ first collection, The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, is full of conflict: internal, external, spiritual and historical. Moving between the present and the early twentieth century, the tone and point of view is consistent even as we shift between perspectives. The language of faith mixes with the vernacular of modern America,…
-Reviewed by Sally Jack- Beloved of brides, the rhyme ‘something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue’ came to mind during a reading by Peter Hughes at this year’s Cultural eXchanges festival held at Leicester’s De Montfort University. Hughes – poet, artist, translator and teacher as well as publisher at Oystercatcher Press – read from…
– Reviewed by Charlotte Rowland – Fiona Sinclair’s Ladies Who Lunch is about women and the items that represent and insinuate feminine regimes, focussing on materials and consumer objects. As accessories, acts of motherhood and aspects of physical womanly beauty clash and collide, the poems attempt to reconcile vying feminine duties, even when those duties impede on a sense…
– Reviewed by Becky Varley–Winter – The cover of A Piece of Information About His Invisibility is a plant with its roots showing, and a small framed photograph of a girl (Laressa Dickey as a child?), enclosing a long, somewhat prose-y poem about memory and place (the Tennessee of Dickey’s childhood). The blurb tells me that this work ‘tracks the inevitable loss…
– Reviewed by Becky Varley–Winter – Bethany Carlson‘s Diadem Me is published beautifully by MIEL press: the cover is an image of bright beads, scattered flowers and petals on white, like a bride’s dressing table, and the poems are divided into sections: Stature, Posture, Gesture, Pose and Repose. The title is theatrical, queeny: a sparkly crown of stuck-together words, glinting. By ‘stuck-together’…
– Reviewed by Steve Nash – Martin Appleby, editor and architect of the punk-tinged literary zine Paper and Ink, shares his hope in the opening notes that readers will ‘enjoy the shit out of’ issue 4. Truth be told, it’s not hard to enjoy something that bears so many marks of the passion that clearly went into its…
-Reviewed by Holly Jazz Kotzé- Because The Night is a collection of short stories all by the same writer, Stacy Hardy. Here’s my confession: that bit of information somehow passed me by; an administrative error, a collapse in concentration, whatever it was I started reading this book thinking it was simply a novel or a…
- reviewed by James Mcloughlin – Dead Good Indeed – a homely venue and homelier hosts David Morrissey once said of Liverpool that ‘it was never a city that criticized anyone for taking a chance’ and I proceeded to the Dead Good Poets Society open mic night (for the first time) with this in mind.…
- reviewed by Lettie McKie – The Grand in Clapham Junction is not a typical venue for literary entertainment. An old theatre converted into a nightclub it comes with battered stucco balconies, stalls cleared of seats for a dance floor, sticky walls, multi-coloured lights and a disco ball. However, in a savvy attempt to draw…
– Reviewed by Becky Varley–Winter – The cover of Susan Lewis’ latest pamphlet, State of the Union, shows ‘Marriage’ by Melissa Stern: two androgynous, different-coloured figures sit bolt upright, facing away from each other, straight-faced, back to back. Their posture is strong, but they appear absorbed in their own worlds: one closes their eyes dreamily, while the…
-Reviewed by Bethany W. Pope- Ashland Creek Press’ Among Animals: The Lives of Animals and Humans in Contemporary Short Fiction is a complex anthology with an agenda that runs deeper than the themes explored in each individual story. The editor, John Yunker, makes his stance on the nature of the anthology clear in his introduction,…
Reviewed by Sally Jack Warning – this review contains (p)unadulterated and gratuitous punning. A bloomin’ great queue, fish and chips and an appreciation of puns would all likely feature on a ‘what do Brits enjoy’ checklist. Shakespeare was a master punner, Milton Jones has forged a career out of it and puns and word play…
–Reviewed by Sue Kindon– I missed out on Miles Salter’s first collection, The Border (2011, written as Miles Cain), also published by Valley Press (an independent publishing house based in Scarborough, who appear to be doing sterling service), so I came to his second collection not knowing what to expect. The cover illustration, depicting two squirrels in boxing gear laying into…
