Category Archives: Uncategorized

In the anthology’s introduction, Trévien writes that ‘we wanted poems that would make us create new patterns of association in our brains where a historical period or event was concerned.’ The aim’s a lofty one, then. However, Prior and Trévien score some home runs and, given the anthology’s broad sweep – from Harry Man’s telescopingContinue reading “Claire Trévien’s and Gareth Prior’s Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History”

Seeing a swan holed below the waterline by a crossbow bolt on my stretch of river, I ran for the phone. The RSPCA were at the scene with the alacrity of an emergency service but I never found out what happened to the bird. In South Oxford, the river rubs shoulders with one of the city’s tougherContinue reading “Olivia Byard’s The Wilding Eye: New and Selected Poems”

Sainsbury’s can sell your daughter a beautician’s outfit but not a lab coat and stethoscope. Although I’d always known that the girls’ toy aisle is a lurid pink, it never bothered me until my own daughter walked through its patriarchal nightmare of submission and subserviance. She loves Disney, dresses and all things pink, and, yes, I’m sureContinue reading “Devil’s Haircut: Carmina Masoliver’s Nasty Little Intro #8”

Oxford’s Golden Cross is a Pizza Express now but the interior decor points to its Tudor pedigree. Outside, the square has a palpable theatricality, despite the Vision Express and coffee shop adding two more of its sides. In that Pizza Express, it’s believed that Thomas Cranmer was temporarily imprisoned before meeting his fiery fate by Boswell’s department store,Continue reading “Theatre of Blood – Chris McCabe’s Speculatrix”

Byron rowed his own gondola to the island of San Lazzaro to learn Armenian but, standing in the monastery’s climate-controlled manuscript library, it became clear that the importance of this diamond-shaped scrap of a leper colony in the Venetian lagoon was far greater than its casual association with the bad boy of English letters. The MekhitaristContinue reading “The Scottish Poetry Library needs your money”

Watching the Sky journalist, Colin Brazier, picking through a suitcase at the crime scene / crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine was the grimmest reminder of our fascination with the relics. Sadly, nothing changes much – back in 1815, Lady Caroline Lamb was in the first wave of tourists to descend, vulture-like, uponContinue reading “Jo Field’s The Anglesey Leg”

Bedouin camp (Photo credit: Susanne Koch) In the Old Testament, it was important to treat guests right – you could never be sure who they really were. Besides, if you were living a tough life in a harsh environment, hospitality made sense – one day, it might be you seeking food and shelter. In Genesis 18, AbrahamContinue reading “Among Angels – Kae Tempest’s Brand New Ancients”

The slings and arrows of Hamlet’s existential crisis would have it that conscience makes cowards of us all and that certain suffering on Earth is preferable to damnation. However, the values that Waldron presents in The Brand New Dark share little with those of the 1600s. Holding Yorick’s skull in V.i., Hamlet asks, ‘Where be your gibesContinue reading “Sympathy for the Devil – Mark Waldron’s The Brand New Dark”

Sam Willetts is one of the Next Generation poets, 2014, and I’m currently writing on his collection, New Light for the Old Dark, for the nextgenerationpoets.com blog. Next Generation Poets 2014 The Poetry Book Society

Wandering Stirling Castle this summer, I kept my camera(phone) holstered. In a baronial hall, holidaymakers queued to pose in a high-backed-chair-cum throne. What turned the stomach was that it’d been sited there to add yet another photo-opportunity to the itinerary of digitally uploaded moments. Any self-respecting 21st century tourist needs these to prove that s/he’s oh such a wacky photographer, andContinue reading “Jane Yeh’s The Ninjas”