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Category: Contemporary Poetry

Elegies by Douglas Dunn

25/06/2021

Grief experts say grief has a shape; they have charted its pattern.  First there is shock, then denial, then bargaining (for more time), then guilt, anger, depression, and finally acceptance. The experts disagree over the number and order of the stages but they all agree there is a pattern. The experts could probably track the … More Elegies by Douglas Dunn

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Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore

22/06/2018

          Last month I went with hubby to see comedian Richard Herring perform his F**k I’m Fifty stand-up show at Liverpool’s Hot Water Comedy Club.  In one bit of the routine Herring compared being a child to being on the beach with your back to the sea. Then when you’re older, … More Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore

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The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney

24/11/2014

My father hated DIY whatever its shape and size.  He had an old, brown canvas bag of tools that lived on the floor of the shed and only he was allowed to open.  It hardly ever saw the light of day.  Occasionally, though, there’d be something needing doing that mum didn’t want to tackle, putting … More The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney

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Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

06/03/2014

I first remember hearing about Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath in an English lesson after reading an extract from Plath’s The Bell Jar.  I was sweet sixteen, it was an all-girls school, and my teacher was young, female, and romantic; Ted Hughes (we all agreed) was not a nice man. Thirty years on, I’m old … More Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

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A Scattering by Christopher Reid

03/08/2012

When someone we love dies we experience grief in four distinct stages.  So it’s probably no coincidence that Reid’s poetry collection A Scattering, inspired by his wife’s illness and death, is in four parts. The first part, The Flowers of Crete, is concerned with a holiday during her final illness.  However it is his wife’s … More A Scattering by Christopher Reid

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Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott

22/01/2012

Ten years ago I had to submit a poetry portfolio for an MA in Creative Writing and cite my influences.  When my tutor, Professor Newman, read my list she said I wasn’t stretching myself enough, which wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. You see, I’m more of a prose than a poetry kind of … More Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott

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Reviews

  • The Promise by Damon Galgut
  • Learning to Talk: short stories by Hilary Mantel
  • English Journey by J B Priestley
  • At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop
  • Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
  • The Sacred and Profane Love Machine by Iris Murdoch
  • Miscellanea
  • Dracula by Bram Stoker
  • The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
  • Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge
  • Twopence to Cross the Mersey by Helen Forrester
  • The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (translated by Michelle Hutchinson)
  • The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
  • Elegies by Douglas Dunn
  • The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor
  • The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather
  • The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul
  • The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
  • Love Is Blind by William Boyd
  • Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (translated by Marilyn Booth)
  • Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
  • The Destiny Waltz by Gerda Charles
  • The Bird of Night by Susan Hill
  • Footnotes – A Journey Round Britain in the Company of Great Writers by Peter Fiennes
  • The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
  • Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
  • The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
  • Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge
  • The Accidental by Ali Smith
  • The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor
  • 10 Best Novels of the Decade: 2010 to 2019
  • Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
  • Emily Dickinson – poems selected by Ted Hughes
  • The Cut Out Girl by Bart Van Es
  • Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley
  • Milkman by Anna Burns
  • Somewhere Towards The End by Diana Athill
  • The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein
  • A Life of Picasso Volume 1: 1881 – 1906 by John Richardson
  • Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Jennifer Croft)
  • Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington
  • Theory of War by Joan Brady
  • Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
  • A Good Man In Africa by William Boyd
  • Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
  • The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)
  • Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
  • Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
  • Docherty by William McIlvanney

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