Posthuman Poetics
Fast, Jorie Graham, Carcanet, June 2017, pp. 96, £12.99 (Paperback) ‘I was very lucky. The end of the world…
The London Road
The summer and autumn of 1651 was make-or-break time for the future Charles II. These were two seasons when his…
Tree Surgeons on the Aberdeen Line
You woke one night to railway tree surgeons giving the trees by the track their yearly trim with their hybrid…
‘Each takes a turn, as one does, south of Market’
Selected Poems, Thom Gunn, Faber and Faber, July 2017, pp.336, £18.99 (hardcover) Proprietary, Randall Mann, Persea, July 2017, pp.80, £12.99…
The Leprechaun by Steven O’Brien
And so it all began with my grandad and the Leprechaun. He was a great man for singing and stories. His…
Wingscape
The path grinds itself into the feet. A grayling skitters from under the boot toe, and settles a stone’s kick…
Crossness Pumping Station
In the summer of 1858, after an exceptional spell of hot weather, with temperatures averaging the mid-30s Celsius (mid-90s Fahrenheit)…
Excitement, Heart in Mouth, to Listen: 50 Years of Poetry International
Amongst the audience for the first Poetry International gathering, which took place in July 1967, was London writer Iain Sinclair.…
Scottish music in 1983
This is Memorial Device, David Keenan, Faber and Faber, February 2017, pp.304, £14.99 (paperback) News of the death, back in…
Night Train to Athens
He was nineteen and she was twenty and they’d ‘met’ ten minutes earlier, seated opposite each other on the Patras-Athens…
Clock
The poet Dafydd ap Gwilym is disturbed in his sleep, c. 1350 Once more he’s walking through the streets…
The Pity of It
Dad boasted he’d ‘read all of Shakespeare’s plays’. He asked Mum if she’d read any of Shakespeare’s plays, but she…
André Malraux and the Transformation of History
André Malraux’s The Walnut Trees of Altenburg (Lausanne, 1943), an underrated masterpiece of the twentieth century, is a difficult and…
Dancing Waves and Midnight Light
Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter, Petit Palais, Paris, 15 September 2017 to 17 December 2017 It’s been exactly 111 years…
The Visible Collection
The Leicester German Expressionist Collection, New Walk Museum and Art Gallery. When it comes to rare collections of modernist art,…
Our Encompassing of this Neather Globe
Folktales about Drake flourished in the West Country even during his own life-time. He was widely thought of as an…
Heyshott Harvest
Three gold headed children bent in prayer, sun through the west window on the copper ear of barley, marking Cobden’s…
Unseen London
London is one of the world’s most photographed cities, so you might think there’s nothing left to see. But you’d…
An Overflow of Violent Bacchanalia
Accounts of the storming of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg on 25 October 1917 read more like those of…
The Last Connection
The way I came, to get my next connection meant me hoofing it through central Glasgow on a night the…
The Difficulties of Writing a Eulogy
Having entered my late seventies, I continually receive the painful news of friends dying. This fills me with complex and…
Moving Energies
Raking Light, Eric Langley, Carcanet,April 2017, pp. 136, £9.99(hardcover) Cavalcanty, Peter Hughes, Carcanet, May 2017, pp.72, £9.99 (paperback) Farm by…
Blokeball
The old boys pitching boules on the dusty patch of ground outside the café – round- shouldered, measuring, pauseful –…
A Permanent Home
Garsington Opera at Wormsley, Summer 2017 George Frideric Handel, Semele Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro Gioachino Rossini, Il…
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