‘‘God, it’s a good job though isn’t it?’ Hugo offers. I tell him I feel the same way. We both agreed: you can’t beat it.’
Jamie Cameron in conversation with Hugo Williams.
Interview | Annie-Rose Fiddian-Green on Breathing With Trees
‘I love the immediacy of the first marks on blank paper. This is often where I can see my own energy coming through.’
Annie-Rose Fiddian-Green on Breathing With Trees, now showing at Brooke-Walder Gallery.
Poetry | Needle by Michael Martin
‘I’m the way she likes anyone left behind — / undeserving, falling.’
New poetry by Michael Martin.
Poetry | Medieval Mystic Margery Kempe in Tesco by Laura Varnam
‘She’s losing tins of custard powder & / baby formula and she’s crushing the body / & blood of Christ under her arm while / John Junior tucks into a doughnut.’
New poetry by Laura Varnam.
Poetry | Vanishing Points by Christopher M James
‘The train driver’s one straight line, as / he calls to mind his schoolboy love / or stillborn child whose name haunts / like an abandoned station.’
New poetry by Christopher M James.
Interview | Michael Deagler on Early Sobrieties by Marina Scholtz
‘Sobriety does get quite uninteresting fairly fast, but if any period of sobriety is interesting, then it’s this.’
Marina Scholtz talks to Michael Deagler about his forthcoming novel, Early Sobrieties.
Poetry | Self Portrait as an Unreliable Narrator by Damen O’Brien
‘But if she was brown-eyed or blue-eyed, / they will not recall, only that her eyes / asked a question that no one could answer.’
New poetry by Damen O’Brien.
Poetry | Punctum by Lisa Kelly
‘If all the protesters were smiling serenely, / would a scowling woman become / the punctum? Or is a scowling woman / too much of a cliché to be a punctum?’
New poetry by Lisa Kelly.
Review | The Radical Vision of Pedro Lemebel by Esmee Wright
‘I hope that, with this collection, the anglophone world will continue to expand its interest in world literature; not just the foreign, but the queer, the poor, the almost untranslatable.’
Esmee Wright reviews Pedro Lemebel’s A Last Summer of Queer Apostles.
Fiction | Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal
‘It had been an early education, Nathu thought, in the fact that all history was historical fiction. A story had a longer life than a fact.’
An extract from Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal.
Essay | ‘Everything Shapes What It Encounters’: On the Life and Work of John Burnside by Tom Branfoot
‘As he writes in The Music of Time, ‘to make a poem at all is an act of hope’, for a future in which somebody is present, attending to the music and the craft.’
Tom Branfoot remembers the late John Burnside.
Review | Clare Best’s Beyond the Gate
John O’Donoghue Clare Best’s Beyond the Gate . Beyond the Gate, Clare Best, (Worple Press, 2023), 88 pages, £12 .…
Poetry | Glitch by Nicholas Hogg
‘What figure / is the chance that a poet can appear / on praise.’
New poetry from Nicholas Hogg.
Interview | Rowland Bagnall’s Near-Life Experience by Jamie Cameron
‘But language often fails at being accurate (if accuracy is even the aim), so I’m also interested in the things that writing can and can’t pull off.’
Jamie Cameron talks to Rowland Bagnall about his new collection, Near-Life Experience.
Fiction | Here it Was, the Start of Life by Harriet Armstrong
‘I wanted to learn something that would shock me, something that came from someplace very far outside of myself. I was tired of learning things I could have pulled out of my own mind very easily and passively.’
New fiction by Harriet Armstrong.
Review | This Rotation of Buttocks by Magnus Rena
‘If the space you live in is beholden to a landlord, then that space is not really yours, and with every day that you spend in it a sense of alienation is cemented.’
Magnus Rena reviews ‘The Lodgers’.
Essay | Pareidolia by Tallulah Griffith
‘I guess maybe that’s called haunting, that magic pull of things akin to those in our glass boxes, things that cannot last.’
New writing by Tallulah Griffith.
Review | Literary Posters: The Birth of an American Visual Culture by Louis Harnett O’Meara
‘This was the fate of the literary poster; brief but seminal, its visual motifs, techniques and advertising innovations were quickly absorbed into new mediums.’
Louis Harnett O’Meara on The Art of the Literary Poster.
Review | Pulling a Stunt by Lucy Thynne
‘‘In this meeting of darkness and light,’ Cusk writes, ‘was a beginning.’’
Lucy Thynne reviews Parade.
Fiction | There or Not There by Claire Carroll
‘He said if he had done it, then that person would have almost certainly drowned, and he’d be a murderer.’
New fiction from Claire Carroll.
Interview | Andrea Khôra on RAPTURE by Eric Block
‘I see the role of the artist to be nuanced. While exploring big ideas is one role an artist can take, I find myself hoping to create art that lets the complexity of situations exist within the work.’
Eric Block speaks to Andrea Khôra about her new film, RAPTURE.
Review | The Partial Truth by Rowland Bagnall
‘The Vast Extent offers a thoughtful exploration of believing and its origins, considering not only how ideas are formed but how they come to be revised.’
Rowland Bagnall reviews ‘The Vast Extent’ by Lavinia Greenlaw.
Review | The Spirit of the Times by Patrick Cash
‘A very physical and evocative portrayal of the town is built, even if a more beautiful story perhaps hides in its shadows.’
Patrick Cash reviews Pity and The Night Alphabet.
Interview | Stitches, Stems and Pockets in the Sublime Work of Danielle Dutton by Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
‘But that’s often how art works. It’s intuitive. It’s murky. You’re creeping along in the dark until you’re not.’
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou speaks to Danielle Dutton about her latest collection, Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other.