Writer Alex Nicholson and musician Pam Shaffer launch their new multimedia story-telling experience this month, a collaboration that has brought them together across the Atlantic. Metalalia, an immersive app for tablet and smartphone devices, will give its audience fairytales with a modern twist, accompanied by a unique soundtrack and visual art. They’ve already made a…
-In conversation with James Webster- A few days ago I had the chance to interview Rosie Wilby, the utterly personable award-winning comedian, musician, writer and feminist about her new show Nineties Woman. Rosie came to prominence through a series of strong performances at comedy competitions like Laughing Horse and Funny Women, and she’s since toured…
-With Jonathan Aldridge- Emma Wright founded the Emma Press, an independent small publisher, in 2012. The press’ titles include The Flower and the Plough, the debut pamphlet from Rachel Piercey, The Emma Press Anthology Of Mildly Erotic Verse and The Emmores, a pamphlet by Richard O’Brien. The Emma Press Anthology of Motherhood is publishing on…
-Reviewed by David Clarke- The Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin once argued that the distinguishing feature of the novel was its multi-voiced-ness. This distinguished it from the lyric mode, which, he claimed, addressed the reader as a single, undivided voice. Whereas the lyric is a mode of identity, Bakhtin suggested, the novel is multiple, orchestrating…
-In conversation with Claire Trévien- Ira Lightman makes public art around the UK, regularly appears on BBC Radio 3′s The Verbs, writes and performs, and spent a lot of 2013 tracking poetry plagiarism. Claire Trévien: It’s been a busy year for you – it began with the Christian Ward scandal - you quickly became known as the ’poetry sleuth’…
-In conversation with Claire Trévien- Helen Ivory is a poet and artist. Her fourth Bloodaxe Books collection is Waiting for Bluebeard (May 2013) She has co-edited with George Szirtes In Their Own Words: Contemporary Poets on their Poetry Salt 2012. She teaches for the Arvon Foundation, The Poetry School and mentors for the Poetry Society. She edits the webzine Ink…
-Robert James Russell spoke to Ian Chung- Author Bio: Robert James Russell is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author and the co-founding editor of the literary journal Midwestern Gothic. His work has appeared in Joyland, The Collagist, Gris-Gris, Thunderclap! Magazine,, and LITSNACK, among others. Sea of Trees (Winter Goose Publishing, 2012) is his first novella. What inspired…
-Reviewed by Billy Mills- Whitehall Jackals is a collaborative poem sequence written by Chris McCabe, a Liverpool-born, London-based poet whose work is new to me, and long-standing British avant garde poetry landmark Jeremy Reed. The work is a kind of psychogeographic plunge into London in alternating voices, a tangled weave of intersecting, parallel and…
Dr Fulminare, excommunicated alchemist and editor-in-chief of poetry anthology publisher Sidekick Books, turns investigator and interviews one of his own editors, Jon Stone, about the latest Sidekick offering, Coin Opera 2: Fulminare’s Revenge, and what it means for poetry. Me, the eminent, pre-eminent and always extraordinarily busy Dr Fulminare, performing an interview? Just because the…
-Interviewed by Claire Trévien- 1. Tell me about this new anthology you’re editing, Aliens: Recent Encounters. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that they will take different approaches to the alien encounter. Did you feel a need to distance yourself from the kind of images the word Alien would immediately conjure (the film franchise and…