by Helen Ivory | Aug 31, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
I confess to having a personal interest in the art and the life of Stanley Spencer that is entirely fanciful, born of the fact that he and my grandmother, Hilda, both worked in war hospitals in Bristol during the first world war. ‘They could have met,’ I...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 31, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
The title of this collection is taken from a poem with that name in the book. Was it night fall or the sun eloping with a cloud? No one knew for sure but whatever the cause the shadow factory vanished. The poem in its entirety is about the demolition and...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 9, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
Witness By Jonathan Kinsman. Burning Eye Books. £9.99. In his new pamphlet ‘Witness’ , the poet Jonathan Kinsman has taken the gospel of the New Testament and drawn inspiration from the disciples and their stories, the then fiercely...
by Helen Ivory | Jun 20, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
Poetry comes from a deeply personal inner landscape. But what happens when external geographies bring their own emotional and social clout to the party? Enter John Dust – the riveting personification of Louise Warren’s native Somerset. Dust feels...
by Helen Ivory | May 16, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
As with her previous collection, My Grandmother Skating (Indigo Dreams), Hex explores ‘the extraordinary with the everyday […] myth, magic and fairy tale’, but goes darker. It quotes Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984) ‘She was feeling...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 24, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
This book has an unusual premise in that it’s about something you wouldn’t want to read about. It’s about one of the most difficult subjects – child loss – and yet Hopkins’ writing allows the subject the sensitivity and accessibility that it needs. The...
