Poetry, Visual Art and the Good Intentions of a New Year January and February feel like the lowest ebb of the year and thus the worst time to engage with a new project. It is a time for sloping about, perhaps ravelling in the tail ends of the old year. The part of the... Continue Reading →
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#MyDayInBooks Part 2
23/10/18 in seven books Book 1 Today I ordered a copy of Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo. The Emperor’s Babe by the same author is in my top ten - beautiful, compelling, the language is a magnificent dream, and Zuleika is one of the best characters I know. Lover Man is more recent. I also... Continue Reading →
#MyDayInBooks part 1
10/10/18 in 5 books Today is a day when many interesting books have crossed paths, and I thought I would share them. Book 1: Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile by Alice Jolly In the early hours, long after I had hoped to go to sleep, utterly gripped, I finished reading Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile. I was... Continue Reading →
Sour Fruit by Eli Allison – review
I'm very happy to review Sour Fruit the debut novel by fellow Unbound author Eli Allison. Here is the blurb: Onion is snatched. Which is proper shit because she still had nearly twenty quid left on her Angry Slut Teen Clothing gift card and now she was never going to get those flamingo-pink leather chaps she’d been eyeing... Continue Reading →
The i word
Recently at Speakey Spokey in Brighton (a great night featuring readings from Colin Grant, Sea Sharp, Preti Taneja and music from Rachel Chinouriri) the audience were asked by poet Raymond Antrobus how many of them have more than one identity. No one raised their hands - apart from the people, mainly those on stage, who were... Continue Reading →
Come and meet my new book
I have just finished my second book. A well sifted draft. Parts have been ditched, pinched, pulled, turned around, thrown about, discarded and re-written and I think I am happy with it. I am deciding what to do about it, where to try and find a publishing home, and I will take a little break... Continue Reading →
My friend Roi
When I lived in Dunedin in the way-South of New Zealand, by a certain re-telling of the story, I could make the claim to have been a journalist. It’s definitely what Roi would have done in my position and as this post is about him, it’s what I am going to claim too. Just for... Continue Reading →
Dropped Pins on the Beauty/Catastrophe Slider
This is a piece I wrote when I was predominantly a visual artist, before I started writing for its own sake. I realised on re-reading it that as an artist, I was interested in the same, exactly the same things, as I am when writing. The book I am working on now is in part... Continue Reading →
The Gallows Pole – review
The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers, published by Bluemoose Books. The Gallows Pole is rich, wet, dark, glittering. Words glimmer like the clippings of the coins, scattered in peat and moss, across a stony path. Like a bitter cross wind dragging leaves and hail, the land and the weather drive the story as much as... Continue Reading →
