Jon McGregor, Reservoir 13; The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, 7 October 2017. “One of the things for me, about this book,” Jon McGregor explains before he starts the performance “is not to explain things…to people.” He doesn’t get the laugh he deserves. The audience is mostly anxiously clutching smartphones and muttering things like I don’t […]
Stephen Romer, Set Thy Love In Order: New & Selected Poems, reviewed by Chad Campbell
Stephen Romer, Set Thy Love In Order: New & Selected Poems, (Carcanet, £12.99). Is Steve Romer a love poet? How much did his move from England to France in the eighties influence his style? If we’re to take him at his word, he doesn’t “feel part of any French tradition, except perhaps an earlier one…that […]
Circa Survive, The Amulet, reviewed by Simon Haworth
Circa Survive, The Amulet (Hopeless Records, 2017). Signs for this record, the sixth studio album from Philadelphia’s Circa Survive, were looking more than good ever since they began releasing teaser tracks in the summer, four in total: ‘Lustration’, ‘Rites of Investiture’, ‘The Amulet’ and ‘Premonition of the Hex’. The consistency and excellence of those releases […]
Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography, reviewed by NJ Stallard
An Evening With Chris Kraus, in conversation with Kaye Mitchell; Waterstone’s, Deansgate, September 27, 2017. “Hope not 2 offend but if I die please dont let the frenemy w whom I shared a bf read my diaries & write my biog” wrote artist Jesse Darling, in a recent tweet, regarding the launch of Chris Kraus’s […]
Bill Knott, I Am Flying Into Myself: Selected Poems 1960-2014, reviewed by Ian Pople
Bill Knott, I Am Flying Into Myself: Selected Poems 1960-2014, edited with an introduction by Thomas Lux (Farar, Straus and Giroux, $28.00). In his introduction to Bill Knott’s Selected, Thomas Lux comments that Knott’s first book, Nights of Naomi was ‘straight from the surrealist manifestos, but entirely his own. The poems are violent, dark and […]
Our Town, Royal Exchange Theatre, reviewed by Peter Wild
Our Town by Thorton Wilder, directed by Sarah Frankcom; Royal Exchange Theatre, 19 September 2017. First premiered on Broadway back in 1938, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is a play with a long history of being done wrong – whether that was as a result of overt sentimentalisation (as was the case at its debut), by […]
Robert Lowell, New Selected Poems, reviewed by Ian Pople
Robert Lowell, New Selected Poems, ed. Katie Peterson (Faber, £14.99). If you came to poetry in the sixties and seventies, you came to Robert Lowell. His volume, Life Studies, seemed to dominate the perspective on poetry, in the way that The Whitsun Weddings, Crow or Ariel did, in their own way. One way in which […]
Sarah Tierney, Making Space, reviewed by Tom Patterson
Sarah Tierney, Making Space (Sandstone, £8.99). Making Space is a strong debut novel from University of Manchester alumnus Sarah Tierney. It features Manchester’s Northern Quarter bars, rainy streets and converted Victorian housing in a way that moves beyond signposting without simply being a love letter to a time and a place. It was very easy […]
Ian Parks, Citizens, reviewed by Ian Pople
Ian Parks, Citizens (Smokestack Books, £7.99). Over the years, Ian Parks has produced about a dozen books and pamphlets, from a variety of publishers. His shtick seems to be to have a new book out with a new publisher. But that variety of publisher never seems to diminish or dilute the quality of Parks’ writing, […]
Edward Doegar, For Now and Rebecca Tamás, Savage (Clinic Press), reviewed by Annie Muir
Two strikingly presented new pamphlets have been published by Clinic this year – Edward Doegar’s For Now with its bold misaligned capitals and Rebecca Tamás’s Savage with its inverted abstract countryside scene. Fifteen and nine poems respectively, both offer a one-sitting-sized taste of their author’s main concerns. Doegar’s first poem ‘Anon’ begins: I don’t want […]
John Singer Sargent, The Watercolours, Dulwich Picture Gallery, reviewed by Ian Pople
John Singer Sargent, The Watercolours, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 21 June – 8 October 2017. This is not the first exhibition of Sargent’s watercolours; a little fossicking around on the web will find you a YouTube video of comparable exhibitions in Houston and Boston. So, why is it that a painter known mostly for his turn-of-the-twentieth-century […]
Tara Bergin, The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx, reviewed by Chloé S. Vaughan
Tara Bergin, The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx (Carcanet Press, £9.99). It’s been four years since Tara Bergin’s debut collection This is Yarrow hit shelves and deservedly snagged both the 2014 Seamus Heaney Award and 2014 Shine/Strong Poetry Award. In this brief absence, Bergin has not merely been looking out of her office window for […]
Three pamphlets, reviewed by Ian Pople
Julie Mellor, Out of the Weather (Smith Doorstep, £5.00); Nigel Pantling, Kingdom Power Glory (Smith Doorstop, £9.95); Nicki Heinen, Itch (Eyewear Lorgnette Series, £6.00). In Julie Mellor’s poem ‘Propolis’, she writes ‘In truth, it’s not propolis I’m talking about,/ but those unwanted spaces where words land and rest’. There’s an interesting mixing of metaphor here. […]
Bluedot: Frank Cottrell Boyce and Geoff White, reviewed by Usma Malik
Frank Cottrell Boyce and Geoff White; Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 8 2017. Just as science and theory offer endless opportunities to invent and reinvent stories, so do our existing narratives, and the ‘What if?’ question pops up again, this time in Frank Cottrell Boyce’s incredibly entertaining talk. Stories? He queries. Oh, stories, […]
Bluedot: Sara Maitland, Adam Marek, Dr Rob Appleby, Ra Page, reviewed by Usma Malik
How to Write Science-fiction: Sara Maitland, Adam Marek, Dr Rob Appleby, and Ra Page; Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 8-9 2017. When a Science-fiction writer’s panel kicks off with the sound of foxes howling you know you’re in for an interesting ride. The three men sitting on the front row are in full […]
Bluedot: Tony Walsh and Dr Marcus Chown, reviewed by Usma Malik
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 7 2017. Science, Storytelling, Magic and the Universe. It’s been a starry three days at the 2017 Bluedot Festival. I would have loved to cover it all, unfortunately the TARDIS was in for repairs and so I had to make do with my, limited, human resources and the […]
Manchester International Festival: Returning to Reims, reviewed by Imogen Durant
Returning to Reims, dir. Thomas Ostermeier; HOME, July 11 2017. Thomas Ostemeier brings a work of creative non-fiction by Didier Eribon to life in this thought-provoking performance. A personal memoir with a political focus, the 2009 book by the French sociologist which gives this performance its title offers a penetrating examination of the social forces […]
Penelope Shuttle, Will you walk a little faster?, reviewed by Ken Evans
Penelope Shuttle, Will you walk a little faster? (Bloodaxe Books, £9.95). The eponymous title poem of Penelope Shuttle’s latest collection, Will you walk a little faster?, keen ‘Alice’ fans will know, is a line from ‘The Mock Turtle Song’ in Lewis Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland. The minimalist simplicity of Shuttle’s form here, is not a […]
Bluedot: Sunday’s music, reviewed by Lucy Burns
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 9 2017. At a festival like Bluedot where so much depends on the science talks, the workshops, the demonstrations, the projections, the light shows, the readings…you’d expect the music programming to get left behind. Besides the set of fairly predictable crowd pleasing headliners (Pixies, Orbital, and alt-J) Bluedot […]
Bluedot: Saturday’s music, reviewed by Lucy Burns
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 8 2017. At a festival like Bluedot where so much depends on the science talks, the workshops, the demonstrations, the projections, the light shows, the readings…you’d expect the music programming to get left behind. Besides the set of fairly predictable crowd pleasing headliners (Pixies, Orbital, and alt-J) Bluedot […]
Bluedot: Radiophonic Workshop, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 9 2017. There’s a quiet thrill of anticipation in the stuffy air of the Orbit tent, early evening of the Bluedot Saturday. It’s the bubble of knowing that witnessing the BBC Radiophonic Workshop live is likely to be a rare and unique pleasure. With Leftfield and Orbital on […]
Bluedot: Orbital, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Lovell stage, July 8 2017. With the blazing sun on its way down and the giddy full moon on its way up, the second night of Bluedot needed some suitable music-of-the-spheres to toast the glorious day. Fortunate then that techno pioneers Orbital had set aside their three year indefinite hiatus to […]
Bluedot: The Dark Web – explained by Geoff White, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Contact stage, July 8 2017. There’s a sense at Bluedot sometimes of the stark difference between the utopia of the open air fields and the darker undercurrent of misdemeanour inside the science talks. Not that there’s anything dangerous or dodgy going on, more that there are confrontations within these fabric walls […]
Bluedot: Delia Derbyshire and Mary Casio, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Delia Derbyshire Day – 80th Anniversary Tribute, Nebula Stage, July 8; Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia, Lovell stage, July 8 2017. At festivals, especially big ones with lots of good stuff going on, you get used to wisps of sound from other tents and stages intruding on your experience. I’ve always […]
Bluedot: Pixies, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Lovell stage, July 7 2017. Pixies under the Lovell Telescope with talks on how the universe was formed still ringing in my ears made a strange and beautiful kind of sense. The day was hot and heavy and the crowd that waited at barriers for them for hours beforehand was already […]
Bluedot: Sheena Cruickshank, The Amazing and Horrible World of Parasites, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Mission Control, July 7 2017. It’s hot. I’ve danced in the sun throwing my head back, losing my hat. I’ve burnt my nose. I have an ice-cream and there are tents all round the edges of the field, they’re full of clever people giving talks. I’ll chose somewhere to sit and […]
Bluedot: Ezra Furman & The Boyfriends, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Lovell Stage, July 7 2017. “This is my favorite thing to do in the world” Ezra Furman told an adorning front row at Bluedot on Friday night, “thank you for being here with me.” And as someone shouted up at them, it was a gawd-damn pleasure Ezra! With performances that are […]
Bluedot: Professor Steve Fuller, Transhumanism: Can You Afford to Live Forever, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Contact stage, July 8 2017. You come to Bluedot for music, sure, and maybe a few fun science experiments with plastic bottles and ping-pong balls. But you also come here to wrestle with some of humankind’s most fundamental and ethically demanding questions. On the table today is a simple one: want […]
Bluedot: Leftfield, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 7 2017. Twenty-two years have whipped past since Leftfield released their pioneering album Leftism and joined the ranks of Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Orbital in steering British music away from the total heat-death of endless guitars. The Orbit tent is packed for a full performance of the […]
Bluedot: Anchorsong, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Nebula stage, July 7 2017. Part of the joy of a festival like Bluedot is happening upon a spare hour and filling it with an act you’ve never heard of and know nothing about. The festival itself makes much of the idea of discovery, so much so that it is practically […]
Bluedot: Jeff Forshaw, Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Mission Control, July 7 2017. It’s a tall order trying to explain life, the universe and everything – or at least how it all started – to a tent full of festival folk on a cloudy Friday in a field in Cheshire in forty minutes. But particle physics Professor Jeff Forshaw […]
Manchester International Festival: Holly Herndon and Yael Bartana, reviewed by Luke Healey
Dark Matter: Holly Herndon, Gorilla, June 30; Yael Bartana, What if Women Ruled the World?, Mayfield Depot, July 5, 2017. In a blog post dated 9 March, 2017, Manchester International Festival’s Director John McGrath framed the contents of this year’s edition as ‘a picture of the world today’. While McGrath maintains that ‘We don’t set […]
Love Supreme Jazz Festival 2017, reviewed by Ian Pople
Love Supreme Jazz Festival, Glynde Place, June 30-July 2. So, Love Supreme is five. And there was a swing back to jazz (pun intended) this year. Topping the bill on Sunday on the main stages were Robert Glasper and Gregory Porter; and Herbie Hancock ended the day in the Big Top on Saturday. On the […]
Richard Barnett, Seahouses, reviewed by Ken Evans
Richard Barnett, Seahouses, (Valley Press, £7.99). Is it too fanciful to hope, that a cultural archaeologist, in six hundred years, might turn over in their hands, the delicate, beautiful rectangle of processed wood, print technology, and creative design, that is the small press poetry volume of today, and marvel? They would be right to marvel […]
Sheena Kalayil, The Bureau of Second Chances, reviewed by Ian Pople
Sheena Kalayil, The Bureau of Second Chances (Polygon, £8.99). The trope of the recently widowed man returning to the ‘mother’ land from another country might, in other hands, have seemed just that, a trope. The man who’s returned from time to time and built a house near to his home village, amid the land which […]