by Leah Jun Oh | Apr 20, 2022 | Reviews
“For the leadwood trees of Mmadikola. Ya matswere a Mmadikola” is the dedication that award-winning New Generation African poet TJ Dema offers at the start of this excellent chapbook to a species of tree found in southern Africa. Indicating the timber’s...
by Leah Jun Oh | Apr 13, 2022 | Reviews
Barry Smith’s debut poetry collection is a cornucopia of his rich life and artistic experiences. These poems draw on his life as an educator, theatre director, music lover; Smith directs the South Down Poetry Festival, co- ordinates Chichester’s summer...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 14, 2022 | Reviews
Award-winning poet Rosie Jackson is in her element with her latest pamphlet, Light Makes it Easy. Richly informed by literary and spiritual antecedents, these poems are also completely themselves – both modern and mystical, intimate and universal. There’s...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 1, 2022 | Reviews
From the Welsh Diaspora Bread without Butter Bara heb Fenyn explores the cultural and emotional heritage of poet Wendy French, raised in England whose mother immigrated from Wales as...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 17, 2022 | Reviews
I was intrigued when I saw on social media that Martin Figura was regularly staying in a haunted inn in Salisbury during lockdown. I used to live there, taught at the boys’ grammar school and gave birth to our first son at what is now Salisbury District...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 16, 2022 | Reviews
Beirut, 1975. I remember the news bulletins, the disbelief that anyone, let alone children, could survive the horrors of a bloody civil war. But they can, and Shahé Mankerian’s History of Forgetfulness delivers an extraordinary testimony. His poems are...
