Let’s talk about sex, baby – Jennifer Copley’s Some Couples
Suede’s debut single, ‘The Drowners’, enacts a war between Butler’s masculine, strident rhythm guitar and the androgyny of Anderson’s lyrics …
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Timewatching – Luke Wright’s The Toll
My father’s watch clasps my wrist now. Big shoes to fill, his shoes. The removal of three links slimmed it …
Back to Black -Charlotte Gann’s Noir
Setting the tropes of film noir aside for a moment, Raymond Chandler’s iconic sleuth, Philip Marlowe, feels more like Eliot’s Tiresias: …
Knives out – Matthew Stewart’s The Knives of Villalejo
Our Gothic dopplegängers suppress our unease. Conveniently externalised, Mr Hyde and Victor’s creature stalk the margins. We reassure ourselves that the …
Ian Duhig’s ‘The Blind Roadmaker’
This review was commissioned for the T.S. Eliot Prize newsletter and is reprinted with kind permission. This review was commissioned for the T.S. …
Vahni Capildeo’s Measures of Expatriation
This review was commissioned for the T.S. Eliot Prize newsletter and is reprinted with kind permission. Vahni Capildeo’s Forward Prize …
The 2016 T.S. Eliot Prize
For various reasons, 2016 was not much of a year for reading, or reviewing poetry. So, the experience of reviewing …
Mr Disco – Robin Houghton’s The Great Vowel Shift
I sometimes recollect my final visit to a nightclub, where I now hear the passing bells of time’s Technics decks, not the …
Et in arcadia ego – Luke Wright’s What I Learned from Johnny Bevan
Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, published immediately post-war in 1945, elegises landscape and lifestyle. The outsider Charles Ryder is drawn towards …
Rachael Boast’s Void Studies
I am honoured to have been asked to review the titles shortlisted for the 2016 TS Eliot Prize by the …
Poor Rude Lines 