Timelines: Carolyn O'Connell, Indigo Dreams
Journeys are a feature of this collection – many of the poems contain lines that operate as reflections on the passing of time, mostly in the context of generations within and beyond a particular family. The real journey of the poems take place in time and memory rather than space. In ‘Night Ride’ a daughter returns from abroad, her “belly large with new life” as a reflection in a driving mirror...
16th December 2014
Ten poets bring Quiet Compere's year-long tour to an end with spice and humour
Sarah L Dixon’s inspired Quiet Compere poetry tour giving 10 poets 10 minutes each to read at every venue bade farewell to 2014 with a night at the Blue Cat Cafe in Heaton Moor, Stockport.
It was a buzzing evening – right on my doorstep – and although Sarah had suggested a topic of “volume”, an e...
15th December 2014
Double Bill: edited by Andy Jackson, Red Squirrel Press
I have just had a stressful few days, but 10 minutes with this volume of gems cleared my mind, refreshed my brain and invigorated my laughing muscles. Double Bill is a worthy follow-up to 2012’s Split...
9th December 2014
Split Screen, edited by Andy Jackson, Red Squirrel Press
There are lots of poetry anthologies out there these days; some good, some middling, some not so great. But Split Screen - poems inspired by film and television and edited by Andy Jackson - is an anth...
6th December 2014
Exotic, esoteric, freewheeling: an evening with Long Poem magazine
Many calls for poetry submissions specify a maximum length of 40 lines. Long Poem magazine, as the name suggests, takes the opposite view. Ten contributors read at the launch of issue 12 on Wednesday ...
4th December 2014
In praise of three poets from the West Midlands
There is no shortage of literary talent coming out of the West Midlands and Offa’s Press is leading the way in promoting some its finest voices to the attention of a wider audience.
Nick Pearson is...
1st December 2014
Remembering Salford's past - and fighting to save a library
If you wondered where the great and good of Salford and Manchester were on Sunday afternoon, I can tell you. This event in aid of the much-loved Working Class Movement Library over the road sold out w...
29th November 2014
The Fire in Me Now: Michael Curtis, Cultured Llama
The title of this 12th collection of poems by Michael Curtis is taken from a quote from Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape. At first reading the poet’s fire could be mistaken for pure rage; and t...
28th November 2014
Tutors Mimi Khalvati and Tamar Yoseloff showcase Poetry School pupils
Mimi Khalvati and Tamar Yoseloff are esteemed poets, and highly inspirational poetry tutors as well, judging from the expertise and affection displayed by some of their Poetry School students who read...
23rd November 2014
Eastern flavour as past and present collide at Manchester's Poets & Players
The latest in Manchester’s much-loved series of music and poetry sessions of Poets & Players took place in the glorious historic reading room at the John Rylands Library, beneath false-moustachioed st...
22nd November 2014
Boom!: Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Seren
Thanks no doubt to the overwhelmingly male nature of the literary canon, birth and parenthood are under-represented in the history of British poetry, despite their importance in human experience. Whil...
20th November 2014
Fishing in the Aftermath: Salena Godden, Burning Eye
This collection marks 20 years of poetry and performance by Salena Godden, though the majority of the work included has never been previously published, which is surprising, given the quality.
Hai...
4th November 2014
Waiting for the dawn: lyrical perfection from Alice Oswald
All the lights went out last evening and we sat in pitch dark at the Purcell Room on the Southbank for the commencement of Alice Oswald’s Tithonus: 46 minutes in the life of the Dawn, commissioned by ...
17th October 2014
Good evening, America: Stateside poets reinforce Troubadour's transatlantic reputation
Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, Jorie Graham and CK Willams are just some of the host of American names that have appeared at the famous Troubadour poetry venue in west London over the years. You can now ...
14th October 2014
Passionate poetry on Chanje Kunda's journey to Amsterdam
What happens when a perfectly responsible woman gives in to the pull of passion and adventure? That’s the subject of this one-woman show by Manchester poet/playwright/performance artist Chanje Kunda w...
10th October 2014
Steve Pottinger creates a buzz as 'last orders' threatens Rhythm & Muse
The quietly-spoken, hard-travelling Steve Pottinger was back at Kingston’s Rhythm & Muse on Thursday night. As he told his audience, he gets “a real buzz” out of travelling to different gigs, meeting ...
30th September 2014
Slate Rising: Alison Hill, Indigo Dreams
This collection combines the familiar with a touch of other worlds, observed with an eye that is compassionate as well as curious. At times, there is an unsettling hint of something out there, as in ‘...
15th September 2014
Is Billy Collins still at the top of his game? A fan's view from Edinburgh book festival
Book festivals, unlike music festivals, rarely seem to set many people into a heightened state of animation – unless, of course, those people are bibliophiles.
There were over 800 events taking pl...
7th September 2014
Anthology of Fatherhood, ed. Rachel Piercey and Emma Wright, Emma Press
This anthology of fatherhood arrived hot on the heels of its companion anthology of motherhood, but that’s not surprising. The Emma Press specialises in anthologies and pamphlets; it has produced seve...
31st August 2014
Short Days, Long Shadows: Sheenagh Pugh, Seren
This consummate collection has the certainty of touch one has come to expect from Sheenagh Pugh, one of our finest contemporary poets. The opener, ‘Extremophile’, recently a Guardian Saturday Poem, is...
20th August 2014
Live From Worktown: Bolton's poetry festival anthology
Write Out Loud’s roots are in the north-west; it actually started in Bolton. And this anthology, put together to coincide with the town’s first international poetry festival, Live From Worktown, earli...
7th August 2014
Survivors: ed. by Thomas Ország-Land, Smokestack
True poetry is immune to propaganda and social control; it is immune to infiltration by the far right and to the rewriting of history. That is why we need it. Of vital importance – now, perhaps, more...
3rd August 2014
In Between: John Wedgwood Clarke, Valley Press
This slim volume contains a sequence of 18 poems about York’s snickets, passageways, courts and yards, from ‘Mad Alice Lane’ to ‘Whip ma whop ma gate’, and was commissioned for a project that explores...
3rd August 2014
Slate Voices: Mavis Gulliver and Jan Fortune, Cinnamon
Landscape and memory, landscape and voices, landscape and ghosts. How inevitably connected is the human spirit to the places we inhabit or have inhabited, both in life and death. This is the subject ...
21st July 2014
The Hundred Years' War: edited by Neil Astley, Bloodaxe
You could hear the guns firing on the western front back in England. I didn’t know that was also true in the second world war, but ‘that low pulsation in the east is war’, realised Denise Levertov, in...
17th July 2014
Look At All The Women: Cathy Bryant, Mother's Milk
I have just had a nasty dose of sunburn and I blame Cathy Bryant. You see, doctor, I was sitting in my garden after a vigorous bout of weeding and decided to flick through her latest book of poetry wh...
3rd July 2014
Shooting from the hip: Dharker, Gross and Mort are quick on the draw at the Troubadour
Three leading poets at the top of their games amused, surprised and entertained an audience at the Troubadour in London last night as they delivered a succession of snippets of their poetry in an impr...
30th June 2014
Joyriding the Storm: Vanessa Kisuule, Burning Eye
Vanessa Kisuule is a multi-slam and award-winning young poet, who was voted best spoken word performer in the 2013 Saboteur awards. She writes plays, and one-woman shows, and performs regularly at fe...
24th June 2014
Poetry School students end Joyce odyssey with 'Bloomsound'
It was Bloomsday yesterday – Monday 16 June – in Dublin, and last night it was celebrated at the Blue Elephant theatre in Camberwell, south London, too, as students from the Poetry School, led by tuto...
23rd June 2014
Barrier, battleground? The table as disturbing metaphor
Two Cinnamon Press titles were launched last week at the Poetry Cafe in London. The first reading was given by Jane Monson, pictured, from her new collection of prose poems, The Shared Surface. The C...
18th June 2014
Moontide: Niall Campbell, Bloodaxe
Prompted by the news that Moontide had been shortlisted for best first collection in the Forward prize, and spurred on by the furore surrounding Jeremy Paxman’s remarks, I finally took the book out of...
18th June 2014
Recapturing that 60s mood with Brian Patten in night of laughter and nostalgia
Brian Patten is a survivor of the 1960s. As one of the Liverpool Poets, with Roger McGough and Adrian Henri, he took poetry to a new audience with the joint Penguin publication, The Mersey Sound. Patt...
12th June 2014
Knife wielding, protective gloves: dipping a toe into the world of experimental poetry
How do you feel about experimental poetry? And who defines it anyway? As an amateur listener in this field I went to the latest evening of performance at The Other Room in Manchester in some trepidati...
12th June 2014
Never mind the Forward: Smokestack publisher's breath of fresh air
Smokestack Books is celebrating its 10th birthday this year. In that time it has published 90 titles, “and not one of them has been reviewed by Poetry Review”, said publisher Andy Croft, introducing a...
11th June 2014
Prayer to Imperfection: Lucy English, Burning Eye
Burning Eye Books specialise in publishing performance poetry. Most publishers won’t touch performance poets with a big stick, so my curiosity was instantly piqued. Prayer to Imperfection is Lucy Engl...
9th June 2014
Making themselves heard: festival puts Suffolk poetry groups on map
From the drowned churches of Dunwich, to the rivers Deben and Orwell, to nightingales at the RSPB haven at Minsmere, Suffolk is a place that produces an impressive amount of inpirational poetry locati...
6th June 2014
Louis de Bernières wears his heart on his sleeve at the Troubadour
“This is like a mini poetry festival,” said one enthusiastic poet at Coffee-House Poetry at London’s Troubadour on Monday night. You could see her point.
There were seven poets, each with at least ...
4th June 2014
Cameo Metro: Ken Champion, The Penniless Press
I picked up Ken Champion’s second collection, Cameo Metro, with anticipation. His first, but black & white is better, has a 1960s-style cover, and a sharp, laconic style that I’d guess owes nothing to...
19th May 2014
Rembrandt's Bible: Atar Hadari, Indigo Dreams
This collection is based on an idea of modernised stories from the Old Testament, and is divided into four sections: ‘Honey’, ‘Songs of David’, ‘Father Tongue’, and ‘Rembrandt’s Bible’. To interpret ...
5th May 2014
The Museum of Disappearing Sounds: Zoë Skoulding, Seren
Writing on her staff profile page for Bangor University, where she is senior lecturer in the school of English, Zoë Skoulding says: “I perform poetry with field recordings and electronic music as an e...
30th April 2014
My Family and other Superheroes: Jonathan Edwards, Seren
This collection, in parts nostalgic and emotional, reveals a poet preoccupied with heart and hearth. However, Jonathan Edwards’ characters and places stop short of being caricature, and his appeal to ...
10th April 2014
The Killing of Sophie Lancaster: a tragedy that continues to haunt
There are the sounds of children playing as the audience files in, shouts and laughter; it could be a playground in a park. With the knowledge of what we are about to see, the sounds are eerie, sinist...
2nd April 2014
Things I Will Put in my Mother's Pocket: Catherine Graham, Indigo Dreams
This collection by Newcastle-based poet Catherine Graham begins strongly. In ‘Making Marmalade with Marc Bolan’ the free verse form employed particularly suits the whimsical, yet coherent narrative. ...
20th March 2014
Historic night at Southbank as five laureates read together for first time
It was, as Liz Lochhead said, “a wow of a night, right enough". Five women poet laureates – Gillian Clarke (Wales), Sinead Morrissey (Belfast), Lochhead (Scotland), Paula Meehan (Ireland), and Carol A...
15th March 2014
Warm, edgy, inspiring Loose Muse in Manchester: what's not to like?
Women were on the loose at this open mic night of poetry at Manchester's Three Minute Theatre, a wonderful venue, on Monday 3 March. Held under the umbrella of the established and expanding Loose Muse...
11th March 2014
The Claims Office: Dai George, Seren Books
Dai George is a young poet, born in Cardiff, who now lives in London but often returns to Wales. His debut collection shows a strong interest in religion and ancestors, is enriched by a deep sense of...
4th March 2014
The Elephant Tests: Matt Merritt, Nine Arches Press
I don’t like crosswords, whodunnits or things that require a dictionary, encyclopaedia of myths and legends, or even Wikipedia at hand to get below the surface and winkle out the hidden meanings of th...
1st March 2014
A taste of Canadian poetry in Manchester
This evening at the Anthony Burgess Foundation’s Engine House could have been a disaster. Despite living and working in Manchester for 25 years, I had never heard of the Anthony Burgess Foundation (I ...
28th February 2014
A Shed for Wood: Daniel Thomas Moran, Salmon
I pondered the significance of the title of this collection. A wood shed can be storage for fuel (memories?). It is also a form of shelter. This poet was born in New York but has Irish forbears. The...
14th February 2014
The Visitations: Kathryn Simmonds, Seren
Second collections can be difficult, especially if a poet’s first collection is published to wide acclaim, garnering praise and prizes, as was the case with Kathryn Simmonds’ Forward prize-winning deb...
12th February 2014
On Light & Carbon: Noel Duffy, Ward Wood Publishing
Noel Duffy is a scientist who studied experimental physics at Trinity College, Dublin, and graduated with a first in 1992. After a brief period in research he turned to writing and poetry. On Light &...
5th February 2014
Maps & Legends: eds. Jo Bell and Jane Commane, Nine Arches Press
Midlands-based Nine Arches Press has been around for five years. To celebrate that achievement – no small feat in the world of poetry publishing – they have produced an anthology which can be viewed a...
2nd February 2014
The Best British Poetry 2013: edited by Ahren Warner, Salt
In his candid introduction to this anthology, editor Ahren Warner uses words such as “dubious” and “absurd” to describe the idea of selecting the “best” poetry. Warner, who is also editor of Poetry Lo...
12th January 2014
