Training to be a priest in Rome, St Peter’s Basilica inspired awe and reverence. It wasn’t just because the dome soars to the heavens, shot through with shafts of golden light. No. A visit to the excavations below the Basilica, where I walked the streets of the Roman necropolis just beyond the site of Nero’sContinue reading “Generation Sex – John Hartley Williams’ Pistol Sonnets”
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The Real Thing – Booksellers, not retail sales assistants
Today’s Guardian reports that Amazon Marketplace is hiking its fees up for third-party traders. In a piece published in the same paper this time last year, Tim Waterstone vented some serious spleen, charging Amazon with ‘build[ing their] brand on a reputation for absolutely rock-bottom pricing’ and that customers ‘Go and browse through all the books there,Continue reading “The Real Thing – Booksellers, not retail sales assistants”
Strange Boat – AF Harrold’s The Point of Inconvenience
On passing through Warminster on our routine pilgrimage to my granny’s house, I hoped for red lights and a short queue. For there, floating improbably by a pavement in the centre of town, was a pocket battleship, a corvette, or some such. Topiary’s never really grabbed me but, for a boy whose head was full ofContinue reading “Strange Boat – AF Harrold’s The Point of Inconvenience”
The child is grown, the dream is gone – Hugo Williams’ West End Final
Twice a day, I studied the cigarette stubber riveted to the melamine back of the bus seat. Ash threw the lattice filigree into relief. Discarded cans were lulled by diesel acceleration. Although the top deck was frowsy with children and dulled by winter, through the headphones of my Walkman, the effortless bend of David Gilmour’sContinue reading “The child is grown, the dream is gone – Hugo Williams’ West End Final”
The filth and the fury – Tony Harrison’s v.
As BBC Radio 4 broadcasted a 25th anniversary version of .v, read by Harrison himself, the event rekindled the media’s interest in the poem, chiefly focused on the attacks on it by MPs and the media. One of the reasons given by Tony Phillips for commissioning a new recording of the poem was that itContinue reading “The filth and the fury – Tony Harrison’s v.”
Wish You Were Here – Tamar Yoseloff’s The City With Horns
It doesn’t take long to contract cultural flu in Rome. ‘That fountain’s by Bernini, you say? Show me one which isn’t’. Prolonged exposure to a glut of high Renaissance culture can, at best, feel like snow-blindness, or, at worst, like a bender on fine wines. A couple of months into my sojourn in the eternalContinue reading “Wish You Were Here – Tamar Yoseloff’s The City With Horns”
And God Created Woman – Stephanie Leal’s Metrophobia
As the Authorized Version of the Bible came off the press in 1611, the poet, Aemilia Lanyer, was not prepared to take it lying down. Her outrageous Salve Deus Rex Judæorum mounts a robust defence of Eve and claims Christ for the girls. She writes ‘But surely Adam can not be excusde, / Her faultContinue reading “And God Created Woman – Stephanie Leal’s Metrophobia”
The whole of the moon – Where Rockets Burn Through, edited by Russell Jones
In the days when video games were packaged in cassette boxes, their lurid covers promised adolescents the sort of ultra-violence that, in sixteen colours and with a screen resolution of 320×200, the graphics were never going to deliver. Elite was different. It came in a large austere black box and shipped with Robert Holdstock’s novella,Continue reading “The whole of the moon – Where Rockets Burn Through, edited by Russell Jones”
Animal Lover – Eleanor Rees’ Eliza and the Bear
During the day, our cathedrals rarely feel like spiritual places: the turnstiles, shops and tea rooms in the narthex are at odds with the stuff up at the holy end. And so it was shocking to drop out of this world and into an Atlantean realm of the uncanny in the space of the fewContinue reading “Animal Lover – Eleanor Rees’ Eliza and the Bear”
The last day of our acquaintance – Sharon Olds’ Stag’s Leap
Titian – Venus and Adonis (detail) – (Photo credit: Wikipedia) In his Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare’s goddess attempts to seduce the youth saying, ”since I have hemm’d thee here / ‘Within the circuit of this ivory pale, / ‘I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer; / ‘Feed where thou wilt, on a mountainContinue reading “The last day of our acquaintance – Sharon Olds’ Stag’s Leap”