Richard Scott – That Broke into Shining Crystals
Sometimes books rewire the brain. Even as you read, you know already that, by the time you’re done, you’ll be …
Author Archives: johnfield1
Richard Meier’s After the Miracle
Broad Street was in summer mode: conga lines of language students sporting identical backpacks following the sign of the brolly …
In Bloom – Bernard O’Donoghue’s The Anchorage
Reading Bernard O’Donoghue’s Farmers Cross in 2012, it was the poem ‘Vocation’ that caught my eye. The speaker considers a …
A Fragile Thing – Camille Ralphs’ After You Were, I Am
After a chance remark about George Herbert, the librarian pulled a small volume from the shelf: leatherbound and plain, scruffy …
Penny Boxall’s The Curiosities
I’ve been never one for zoos, but daily life offers the same anxieties. Visiting my mother in her gated compound, …
Fiona Moore’s Okapi
Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks is on my mind – again. On first reading, I paid it scant attention, but it’s nagged …
The Vortex: Hugo Williams’s ‘Fast Music’
Although listening to music remains one of life’s pleasures it does, over time, become complex territory to navigate. It conjures …
Woven Song—Liane Strauss’s ‘The Flaws in the Story’
In a world of spoilers, ignorance can be a superpower. And so it was when I visited Sir John Soane’s …
World in Motion—Matthew Stewart’s ‘Whatever you do, just don’t’
I was lent a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s Football in Sun and Shadow by a friend. She attempted to convey …
Over the Rainbow—Claire Booker’s ‘A Pocketful of Chalk’
Hitherto, charity shops were simply places to bag bargains but, of late, I have discovered their knack for landing painful …
Poor Rude Lines 