Mario Chard | Land of Fire | Tupelo Press: $17.95 Mario Chard’s first collection Land of Fire inevitably comes contextualized with biography; Chard was born to an Argentinian ‘immigrant’ mother and an American father. And many of these poems deal directly with the experience of immigration into America; a writing which, in some ways, could […]
Heroines from Abroad (Carcanet), by Christine Marendon, translated by Ken Cockburn, reviewed by Chloé S Vaughan
Heroines from Abroad (Carcanet), by Christine Marendon, translated by Ken Cockburn, reviewed by Chloé S Vaughan ___________________________ Christine Marendon’s Heroines from Abroad, translated by Ken Cockburn, is a revealing collection that reminds us that the power of poetry isn’t limited to the words. The feeling that overcomes you when reading the poems is numinous; they take […]
Manon | Manchester Opera House | reviewed by Aminah Barnes
Manon | Manchester Opera House The Parisian tale of desire, decadence, and doom was produced by the late Kenneth MacMillan in 1974 and was his third full-length production as resident choreographer for the Royal Ballet. Manon followed his widely successful Romeo and Juliet (1965) and his second masterpiece, Anastasia (1971), which was met with a […]
Ellen Hinsey | The Illegal Age | reviewed by Ian Pople
Ellen Hinsey | The Illegal Age | Arc Publications: £10.99 Ellen Hinsey’s The Illegal Age is a study in rhetoric. It is a study in how language is warped by power and how language colludes with and supports power. As such it is, perhaps, a poetic rendering of some of the analyses of Foucault or […]
Miles Champion | A Full Cone | reviewed by Ian Pople
Miles Champion | A Full Cone | Carcanet £14.99 The challenge or skill, perhaps, for a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet is how much of conventional syntax to retain to allow the surface of the text to be ‘accessible’ or not. Or perhaps that is how I see it. Clearly, there is a cline of accessibility here, with […]
Jim Crace and Jenni Fagan: Manchester Literature Festival and Literature Live at the Centre for New Writing, 5/11/18, reviewed by Adam Wolstenholme
Beauty in the dark – an evening with Jim Crace and Jenni Fagan Jim Crace and Jenni Fagan were interviewed last night by Ian McGuire at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama. It was an evening of parallels and contrasts – of the relationship between the human and the animal, luxury and poverty, […]
Possum | HOME | reviewed by David Hartley
Possum | HOME | November 1st There was a sense of slight apology in Matthew Holness’s introduction to Possum to the gathered audience at HOME’s event screening this week. Known for his cult comedy hit Garth Marengi’s Darkplace, Holness wanted it clear from the start that his debut feature film was in no way comedic […]
alt-J | the Bridgewater Hall | 28th October
alt-J | the Bridgewater Hall | Sunday 28th October Sunday night was the first night this year that it’s dropped below freezing in Manchester and I spent more than an hour of it outside the Bridgewater Hall waiting to see if the fire-brigade would let us back in to see alt-J after the alarm went […]
Everything that happened and would happen, Manchester International Festival, Oct 10-21, reviewed by Ronan Long
The latest product of German avant-garde impresario, composer and director Heiner Goebbels premiered at the recent Manchester International Festival preview. Everything that Happened and Would Happen was held in the cavernous, derelict Mayfield Station, the performance telling a history of sorts, an esoteric, chaotic history of Europe. This absurdist compression of the 19th and 20th […]
Tom Odell | O2 Apollo | October 19th
Tom Odell | O2 Apollo | Friday, October 19th Tom Odell first came to the attention of most of us in 2013 with his debut album, Long Way Down, which shot quickly to number 1. The following year – after an Ivor Novello Award win for Best Songwriter – his sickly sweet “Real Love” graced […]
IDLES | The Ritz | October 19th
IDLES | The Ritz | Manchester | October 19th It came as no surprise to see the Ritz bursting at the seams for IDLES’ set on Friday. They are arguably the most exciting band on the British music scene at the moment and the hype and buzz around them was evident in the atmosphere as […]
Take 2: Terrance Hayes, Manchester Literary Festival at the Central library, reviewed by David Adamson
Review: Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin Manchester Literary Festival Central Library, Friday 19th October 2018 David Adamson “something happened / In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens / Almost everywhere in this country every day” -Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous A few years ago the intended subject of these […]
Take 2: Filigree, Contemporary Black British Poetry Manchester Literary Festival at the Central Library, reviewed by David Adamson
Review: Filigree, Contemporary Black British Poetry Manchester Literary Festival Central Library, Friday 19th October 2018 Tonight, in the surgically bright Performance Space of Manchester’s Central Library, three young poets talked about darkness. This wasn’t, however, the usual darkness that audiences of poetry nights are accustomed to. Instead, Momtaza Mehri, Victoria Adukwei Bulley and Rachel Long […]
Filigree and Terrance Hayes, MLF at the Central Library, Oct 20th, reviewed by Thomas Lee
Dorothea Smartt steps onstage in the stark white Corinthian hatbox of the Manchester Central Library. The music of Johnny Nash and the O’Jays dies away, leaving only the faint strains of a violinist busking outside in St. Peter’s Square. Nobody has told him that we’re here to listen to poetry. Smartt is a poet in […]
Peterloo| HOME | reviewed by David Hartley
UK Premier of Peterloo | HOME | October 17th There was something dizzying about watching Peterloo mere metres from the site of the massacre itself, which commemorates its 200th anniversary next year. The magisterial glow of Manchester seem to shine from between the bricks with just a little more intensity after I came blinking out […]
Beth Underdown at IABF, Oct 16th, – reviewed by Adam Wolstenholme
There were stories to chill the spine and warm the heart at an event to launch the new collection by local novelist Beth Underdown this week. Beth read from Love makes as many at the Anthony Burgess Foundation on Tuesday. Her collection dramatises the women featured in the exhibition Lost Voices which ran at National […]
Carys Davies and Sarah Moss, hosted by Katy Shaw at the International Burgess Foundation, Manchester Literature Festival, October 14th, reviewed by Matthew McGrogan
The sun emerged from behind the clouds as Katy Shaw welcomed Carys Davies and Sarah Moss to the International Burgess Foundation. Both novelists have recently celebrated the release of a new book — Carys Davies with her debut novel West and Sarah Moss with her novel Ghost Wall. Katy began by mentioning the form of […]
Terrance Hayes | American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin | reviewed by Gurnaik Johal
Terrance Hayes | American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin | Penguin, £9.99 I’ve been trying to write a review of Terrance Hayes’ American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin all summer. I read the book cover to cover in one sitting when it came out in June. Since then, I’ve dipped in […]
Take 2: 24 Stories with Kathy Burke, MLF at the Dancehouse, reviewed by Pippin Major
24 Stories, MLF at the Dancehouse There’s a hum of lively chatter in Manchester’s Dancehouse theatre as the crowd awaits the arrival of the four stars of tonight’s event. No doubt it is the star-power of Kathy Burke that has filled most of the seats, and indeed this is a topic visited again and again […]
Xi Chuan and Jennifer Lee Tsai at the Manchester Literature Festival, reviewed by Weng U Pun
Xi Chuan and Jennifer Lee Tsai at the Manchester Literature Festival This Saturday at the Anthony Burgess Foundation I had the opportunity to hear the poems of Xi Chuan, who is currently a professor at Beijing Normal University and Jennifer Lee Tsai, a fellow of the national poetry mentoring scheme, The Complete Works III. The event […]
Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinene, with Gemma Cairney, Manchester Literature Festival at the Central Library, Oct 12th 2018, reviewed by Christine Walker
Review: Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible, at the Central Library The Central Library, on St Peter’s Square, Manchester was set to host, as part of the Manchester Literature Festival, a night with the young and well-received authors of Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible, Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinene. The […]
Zaffar Kunial, Richard Scott & Hannah Sullivan at the IABF, Manchester Literature Festival, Oct 13th, reviewed by Suzi Clark
Faber New Poets: Zaffar Kunial, Richard Scott & Hannah Sullivan The International Anthony Burgess foundation saw a great turn out for the Faber New Poets event: a stunning book launch for the work of new voices in poetry, celebrated as part of the Manchester Literature Festival. Unfortunately, only three of the poets were able to […]
24 Stories with Kathy Burke and others, MLF at the Dancehouse, reviewed by David Adamson, The Dancehouse Theatre, 10th October 2018
Review: 24 Stories with Kathy Burke and others, Manchester Literary Festival When catastrophes such as the Grenfell Tower fire happen, in the aftermath news reports tend to describe them as ‘an unspeakable tragedy’. While that adjective is fitting in regards to the trauma of the affected and the difficulty in describing such horror, there […]
A Celebration of Muriel Spark, with Jackie Kay and Alan Taylor, Manchester Literature Festival at Cosmo Rodewald Theatre, Centre for New Writing
The Scottish writer Jackie Kay is third modern Makar, the Scottish poet laureate, whose work is known for its humour and exuberance. Who better to celebrate that other grand dame of Scottish letters, Muriel Spark? Kay was joined on stage at the Cosmo Rodewald campus venue on Tuesday by literary journalist and Spark biographer Alan […]
Nicolai Houm and Arno Camenisch, Manchester Literature Festival at IABF
In the redbrick engine house at the Anthony Burgess Foundation we find Norway’s ‘Most American Author’ and one of Switzerland’s most widely translated novelists. They are both mountain men: they ski, they snowboard, they go to the mountains for isolation and tranquillity, but also to procrastinate. For Nicolai Houm and Arno Camenisch, skiing is ‘the […]
National Theatre’s Macbeth | The Lowry
Macbeth | The Lowry | October 4th, 2018 Macbeth, like many of Shakespeare’s tragedies, is known for its brutal deaths. Rufus Norris’s National Theatre production of Macbeth, which has started a UK tour this week in The Lowry, Salford, after a run in London earlier this year, gives the audience its fair share of brutal […]
Eleni Vakalo | Before Lyricism | reviewed by Ian Pople
Eleni Vakalo | Before Lyricism | Ugly Duckling Press $18.00 Eleni Vakalo’s Before Lyricism appears in Ugly Duckling Press’ ‘Lost Literature’ series. Among other authors in this series are Laura Riding, Man Ray, Duchamp and Cesar Vallejo. Vakalo, herself, was clearly a very important figure in post-war Greek culture; having studied Art History at the […]
David Crosby | Palace Theatre | September 15th
David Crosby | Palace Theatre | Manchester | 15 September, 2018 David Crosby, former Byrd, formerly of Crosby, Stills and Nash (and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), is, possibly thanks to the fact that many of his former band mates are no longer talking to him, these days touring with his son, James Raymond, Canadian […]
Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | reviewed by Ian Pople
Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | Shearsman Books £9.95 The cover of Mary Leader’s She Lives There Still is entitled ‘Wildflowers with a View of Dun Laoghaire, Dublin’. The picture is detailed and colourful contrasting the lower half of the picture with its whites, golds and blues, in the daisies and poppies, and […]
J.H. Prynne | The Oval Window | reviewed by Ian Pople
J.H.Prynne | The Oval Window ed. N.H.Reeve & Richard Kerridge | Bloodaxe £12.00 This new edition of The Oval Window contains both Prynne’s original poem and also an annotated version of the same text. The book also contains drawing and photographs which Prynne made and took around the time of the composition of the poem. […]
Nick Laird | Feel Free | reviewed by Gurnaik Johal
Nick Laird | Feel Free | Faber & Faber £14.99 There’s a SoundCloud recording of Nick Laird reading ‘Feel Free’ that I stream once in a while when I can’t sleep. It’s about a parent on night-feed duty, half-awake, half-dreaming. Listening to the reading, the rhythms and rhyme create a kind of lulling effect and […]
Peter Green’s Translation of Homer’s The Odyssey | reviewed by Edmund Prestwich
Homer: The Odyssey, trans. by Peter Green | University of California Press £24.00 Historian, translator of Greek and Latin poetry and, in former lives, wartime serviceman in the Far East, journalist and historical novelist, Peter Green is the Dougherty Centennial Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. His translation of The […]
The HandleBards’ Twelfth Night | Ordsall Hall | reviewed by Laura Ryan
The HandleBards’ Twelfth Night Ordsall Hall, Salford | July 26th Two words in particular tend to strike fear into the heart of any introverted theatre-goer: audience participation. It was hinted before the commencement of the first act of this rather raucous rendition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that some of us would be called upon to […]
Henri Cole | Orphic Paris| reviewed by Ian Pople
Henri Cole | Orphic Paris | New York Review Books £10.99 For Henri Cole, ‘…Paris is the city of the beloved’. This not only implies that the beloved lives in Paris but also that the city holds the beloved, that the existence of the beloved is part and parcel of the existence of Paris. If […]
Acid Mothers Temple | Bluedot Festival July 22nd | reviewed by Ronan Long
Acid Mothers Temple | Bluedot Festival | July 22nd 2018 One of the stranger acts in the shadow of the telescope this weekend was Acid Mothers Temple, a group that resolutely defies style, genre and most other standards of classification in popular music. Formed in 1995, Acid Mothers Temple are a group of experimental musicians mainly […]