1. Rubbing soap about his body, he thought of Rose-Maria. In his mind it was her body that his hands were moving over. But not as if she were in front of him—rather as if his mind were inside her body, as if his mind were pinioned on top of her body and her body […]
Charles Manson
My father is floor foreman of a casket company down in West Virginia and gets a call (as happens sadly) about a dead convict from Moundsville with no family, nothing, tonight’s one stabbed in the gut and heart and neck by a cellmate and the M.E. has finished with him and this time Dad says, […]
Owl
It was Julia’s habit to stay on an hour or two after the end of school, long after the commotion in the playground had died down. She had the small office to herself, a glass box portioned off in one corner of the new library. When her eyes were tired at the end of the […]
Billy Liar, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Peter Wild
Billy Liar, Royal Exchange, Manchester, directed by Sam Yates (13 June-12 July 2014). It’s probably fair to say that – if you think of anything when you think of Billy Liar – you think of the 1963 John Schlesinger film starring Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie and Wilfred Pickles. Keith Waterhouse’s original novel, and its sequel […]
Thomas A. Clark, Yellow & Blue (Carcanet Press) £9.95, reviewed by Charlotte Rowland
Thomas A. Clark’s Yellow & Blue, placing two distinct primary colours side by side, might, by its title, suggest the need to synthesise and equate is the most pronounced focus of his newest collection. The poems themselves are unpunctuated, and versed in lower-case small blocks, without titles, in order, it seems, to play with this […]
David Scott Beyond the Drift: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books £12), reviewed by Ian Pople
David Scott is an ex-Warden of the Winchester Diocese School of Spirituality, and a translator and editor of, amongst other things, Lancelot Andrewes. He’s also written on what he describes as a ‘family’ of spiritual writers, including Andrewes, Herbert, Donne, Vaughan and Traherne. In the volume under review, he also writes poems ‘On Not Knowing […]
Angel Meadow, performed by ANU Productions
Angel Meadow, performed by ANU Productions, and directed by Louise Lowe, presented by HOME Manchester (Cutting Room Square, Manchester, 10-29 June 2014). Arriving at Cutting Room Square, a steward from Home ticks off names and asks if anyone would like to leave bags or coats in a large red box for the duration of the […]
The Two Faces of January (2014), dir. Hossein Amini, reviewed by Fran Slater
The Two Faces of January is the latest feature film from director Hossein Amini, whose previous works include 2011 hit Drive and 2012 blockbuster Snow White and the Huntsman. The success of both these films has led to increased levels of interest in his latest work. Set in the early 1960s, the film gets off […]
EDA Collective, Why Are Animals Funny? (Zero Books) £9.99, reviewed by Allison Norris
I’ll be one of the first to admit, I love “Grumpy Cat” (fun aside though, the 2-year old American shorthair cat is actually named Tardar Sauce, and looks the way she does thanks to feline dwarfism and an under bite . . . and is apparently quite the loving little animal). I love pop-cultural tropes […]
Orlando, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Sarah-Clare Conlon
Orlando, Royal Exchange, reviewed by Sarah-Clare Conlon Subheaded “a magical comedy about love and time travel” and featuring former Coronation Street actress Suranne Jones (who trod the boards very persuasively for the first time here in 2009’s Blithe Spirit), Orlando is likely to get plenty of bums on seats whether this and other reviews […]
The Seagull, The Lowry, reviewed by Emma Rhys
The Seagull – a play for writers, actors and lovers; and the Manchester Library Theatre Company’s final production before becoming part of the exciting new arthouse venue HOME, opening in spring this year and located at First Street North. The purpose-built venue will include a 500-seat theatre and five cinema screens, and promises to continue […]
On the Thirteenth Stroke of Midnight: Surrealist Poetry in Britain, reviewed by Ian Pople
This is a very fine book with a whole range of surrealist documents including manifestos, commentaries and beautiful artwork. It is the first book of its kind since Germain’s Surrealist Poetry in English published by Penguin, in 1978. And whereas Germain’s book contained work from the US, Remy’s book concentrates solely on surrealist writing produced […]
MR11 Editorial
Welcome to the winter 2013 issue of The Manchester Review. December here in northern England is a muted and chilly sort of thing: long dim mornings, shivering nights and a palette dominated by browns and greys. In that sobering context the work we feature in this issue is a reminder of other places and other […]
Two Poems
22. The path The sea is melting into floes. The melt-water softens our dogs’ paws and ice splinters their toes. We tie seal-skin boots they try to flick off. We sled the ice-foot, the belt of shore-fast, until the air is as crass as the water below. The grown is […]
Five Poems
Franklin, in prospect Trad. it says on the record sleeve only a century later, now truth beyond question. Such enchantment in the tune. Sometimes I wonder who paid the piper. * Even the name beguiles: open, bare-chested to the weather, then slender and refined. We would not have taken on so […]
Five Poems
The Blue Garden Bluebell or cornflower, it’s all the one to the cherry tree with its many doors opening, hour by hour, on one colour as rooms with forgetful walls might do, their layers of paint and antique paper golden with birds and golden flowers, hunkering under a whim of novelty. By such […]
Death at Doo Lough Valley
1 It is wild in Killadoon. The waves roar at you. ‘You have to do something,’ Eugene the horse man told us. ‘You have to get out and do something here. You can’t just be sitting in, no matter the weather.’ A man stood in a small field, watching his cows feed. His elbows […]
Two Poems
Better By Far By bus? Better by far a magic carpet, finely knotted, richer than blood, broad enough to keep the family together, islanded, apart from every danger, journeying smoothly across the unsegmented sky – not in the cauldron of summer, but in the fresher feel of […]
Three Poems
Granattrichter mit Blumen (1924) after an etching by Otto Dix Because he couldn’t forget it eight years later we stand ten yards from that crater, prevented from gazing into the heart: he blacked that in, held us back from it. And he recalled the background bare, but etched a chain of full-grown wildflowers […]
Suburban Pastoral
—Don’t hit her with it Jasper, give it to her. The toddler looks round, distracted by a leaf. The purple doggie slips from his hand and tumbles down onto the lawn within his sister’s grasp. Louisa reaches towards it, leaning beyond the brightly-coloured playmat onto the grass, eyes wide, mouth open. She grabs it with […]
This Is Where It Will End
This is how it will start. You see him on stage, strumming a blue Stetson, his mouth tightened in concentration. You look at him through your viewfinder and capture him singing along with the chorus. He looks directly into your camera, and you let it hang loose around your neck. You hold his gaze, then […]
Palazzo Meliponderoni
In the old centre of Palermo lie the ruins of Palazzo Meliponderoni―piles of rubble sinking in the scrub and weeds and the cherry and fig trees the neighbours now tend for their pantries. The house had stood there for five centuries and in a moment it was gone. The marchese di Meliponderoni, although the title […]
Mothering Season
Jennifer has returned for the first time in almost three months. I’m in the kitchen, making Ted his breakfast, smearing toast with jam. There’s a click of keys, the creak of hinges and there she is, my daughter. ‘Hello Mum,’ she says. She looks unclean, dressed in the same shabby fleece and stained jeans she […]
George X
George sees the wet weight of the meat, wrapped in paper, clinging to the side of the shopping bag. His father asks him, Do you want Liver and Onions? No, George says. Have you eaten? I just don’t want them. They’re your favourite. I don’t have any favourite. Favourites are for babies. George is lying. […]
And With Such Great Effort To Achieve
“Such a curious place…So strange a place. So unmagical. And with such great effort to achieve the unmagical. Bless them.” —Leonard Cohen, Live at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas Tari Ann Merrin loved Las Vegas. She did not love Las Vegas the way most people do, as a weekend spectator, a passive member of the […]
Three Poems
Retablo for Barrie Cooke This retablo has been made for my friend Barrie, that he may be easy within himself and free from pain or fear. Helsinki Harbour is alive with floes that dip and grind against the nudging ferry. A dusk-fox waits for fish beside an ice-hole. An island is a fortress […]
Two Poems And A Sequence
Pieris japonica in Liverpool front gardens It has an undeniably Japanese look. It embodies the principles of contrast and asymmetry. Its twisting woody stems are like laid paths in a Japanese garden, that open onto unexpected vistas. Its leaf-growth, lying at different heights, suggests rock-terraces. The scarlet of new […]
Two Poems
LETTERPRESS ‘A print is properly a dent on the page. The whole history of letterpress is the abolition of that dent.’ Eric Gill Your first challenge is how to read upside down and left to right. When you’ve mastered this, compose your chosen letters on the stick, like Scrabble. Don’t fret at impenetrable […]
Three Poems
Jardin des Plantes The ruined summer’s lush despondency, Arrested, Tennysonian…Late afternoon Grows fog from all-day rain. Did we have prospects, once? We are the characters we’ve read about, Provincial and enraged At waking up to find we’re dead. In the insanitary capitals Grim functionaries glare Across the sodden parks As the invasion is delayed, […]
Two Poems
The Humane Society My mother brought home the strangest creatures: a lamb wearing a big white diaper; a blind raccoon; a wolfhound with a broken hip, spooked by birthday balloons— Then there was Mary Lou: two hundred sixty pounds and bruised, she held a big leather purse, drank diet pop, smacked pink gum, went […]
Two Poems
2d6 We followed the train of thought through to its termination. It was a mistake we wouldn’t make soon, but would eventually, again and again. The populations shiver and sit, mysteryless, like commoners knighted on the eve of a battle suddenly postponed or perhaps cancelled entirely, nobody knew? We hope it was once as simple […]
Richard Burton, A Strong Song Tows Us: The Life of Basil Bunting (InfiniteIdeas) £30
In Under Briggflatts, Donald Davie declared that Thom Gunn has a public, whereas Basil Bunting has a following. That the former may no longer be guaranteed might have been confirmed with the recent news that August Kleinzahler has had to step in and buy the deceased Gunn’s library, because no-one else wanted to. But those […]
Anne Compton, Alongside (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95
When I first saw this book, with the ghost-like figures on its cover, and that slightly nervy title, I was inevitably reminded of Eliot’s lines from The Waste Land ‘Who is the third who walks always beside you?/ When I count, there are only you and I together./ But when I look ahead up the […]
1984, Liverpool Playhouse, reviewed by Simon Haworth
1984, Liverpool Playhouse (Headlong Theatre), tour continues Sherman Theatre, Cymru 5th – 9th November 2013, West Yorkshire Playhouse 12th – 16th November 2013 and Almeida Theatre, Islington 8th Feb – 29th Mar 2014 by Simon Haworth If rats in a trap ultimately await Winston Smith in the white walled, clinically lit personal hell […]
Catherine O’Flynn, reviewed by Caitrin O’Sullivan
Catherine O’Flynn at the Manchester Literature Festival Saturday 19th October Waterstones Deansgate Drenched from the Manchester rain, I stumbled into Waterstones, Deansgate, to hear Libby Tempest warmly introduce the novelist Catherine O’Flynn. I seemed to be the only one in the room lucky enough to be caught in the sudden thunder and lightning, but I […]