The receipent of the English Pen Translates! Award 2013, The Well of Trapped Words by Sema Kaygusuz is a collection of short stories previously published in her various short story collections in Turkish. The stories in this book have been translated by Maureen Freely, the translator of prominent Turkish writers including the nobel laurette Orhan […]
The Stars are Made of Concrete, The Kings Arms, reviewed by Fran Slater
The Stars are Made of Concrete, Kings Arms, Salford, 26th & 27th July 2015 Anyone who has spent much time on the dole or in the job centre would have cracked a wry smile as they made their way into Salford’s most interesting theatre for The Stars are Made of Concrete. Carol (Jo Dakin) was […]
Shaun of the Dead, The Dancehouse, reviewed by Fran Slater
Shaun of the Dead , The Dancehouse, 22nd – 24th July 2015 It could be argued that you should know what to expect when viewing a stage version of Shaun of the Dead. This would be a different trip to the theatre than many. There were unlikely to be any pretensions, soliloquys would be at a […]
The Skriker, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Peter Wild
The Skriker, Royal Exchange, 1st July – 1st August 2015 Firstofall:imaginewordssoclosetogetherthatyoucan’talwaystellthemapart. You’re in the Royal Exchange, a space transformed, adorned, made out, played out like a Siberian fighting pit, your humble bumble of a reviewer one floor up looking down on a lot of anxious, middle-class people sat at benches wondering, perhaps, what they have […]
Caroline Chisholm: 1972-2015
This post is a tribute to our dear friend and colleague, Caroline Chisholm, a talented writer who passed away, too young, this month. This biography of Caroline was written by her parents for a memorial service held on 13 July 2015. — Caroline was the second of three sisters who were born in Brentwood but never […]
A Love Supreme, 2015, reviewed by Ian Pople
Love Supreme, Glynde Place, Sussex. 3rd – 5th July There is a stunned silence around Glynde Place on the first Monday in July. People wander from the toilet blocks, and back and forth from the Wide Away Café with a pinched look on their faces. It’s not just that someone’s taken their holiday away, […]
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Salford College, reviewed by Alex Pearce
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pendleton Shakespeare Company, Ben Kingsley Theatre, Salford College, 22nd-24th June 2015 Whilst strolling through Buile Hill Park, the clouds gathered, creating a sudden eerie change in the light. My companion asked, ‘Will there be ghosts?’ Not tonight. For we were travelling to see the Pendleton Shakespeare Company – not, presently, a […]
Half a Person, The Kings Arms, reviewed by Fran Slater
Half a Person, The Kings Arms, Salford, 20th June 2015 Perhaps the most special thing about the upstairs theatre at The Kings Arms is its simplicity. In a dark attic with only old pub chairs to sit on, there can be little room for the spectacular settings and props seen in many of Greater Manchester’s more […]
Rebecca Perry, Beauty/Beauty (Bloodaxe Books) £9.95
Rebecca Perry has already garnered a lot of attention and a number of prizes in her short career so far. Her Seren Pamphlet little armoured was a PBS Pamphlet Choice and this book is a PBS recommendation. This book shows just why Perry has gained this recognition, but it is a book I admire rather […]
Michelle Green, Jebel Marra (Comma Press) £9.99, reviewed by L. A. Billing
In Jebel Marra, Michelle Green’s new collection of short stories by Comma Press, we experience Darfur through the eyes of the witnesses: traumatized, broken and defiantly human. We see the desert, refugee camps and mountains of Western Sudan through translators, aid workers, journalists, archaeologists, but most poignantly of all through the displaced, often female victims […]
MR14 Editorial
Welcome to Issue 14 of The Manchester Review. This issue features our usual mixture of exciting, high quality poetry and fiction, from both established and emerging writers. We are particularly pleased to be able to feature, alongside all the great writing, David Summers’ wonderfully deft oil paintings. David, a long time Professor of Art History […]
Two Poems
On Waking Up Your first question, not yet, not quite yet being awake, is not quite out of the question or your mouth and isn’t the fictional where am I? of old stories, but as one or more of your eyes confesses and re-admits light as a matter of […]
Two Poems
(E Major) And she was Grist to his mill And he was Grit to her pearl And she was Salve to his burn And he was Soil to her furrow And she was Touch to […]
Three Poems
The Jennifer Arthur last seen at a posh college dealing ironically: first to go. The Peter who wore out his supports and said, while I tried not to fidget, “They’ll share their words of wisdom, even give you money, but time? Not so much.” Louise who discovered a talent for big and dirty simulations. Paula […]
The Lady Captain’s Prize
Seán and Deirdre were in their sixties now. He’d taken early retirement from the bank and she no longer gave piano lessons, though she went out to golf with such regularity that an elderly neighbour, Mrs Furlong, could not be dissuaded that Deirdre Brennan had a job. They were still Mass-goers, but now went to […]
MILEY CYRUS FAULT
so heavy my head feels like a bag of bricks we used to say that after a night on the town bottle after bottle of CRYSTAL line after line so high we always came down with a bang waking up with a head like a bag o bricks our dingy curtained room migraine bright let […]
Benevolence
Because time is an unfathomable thing I can’t tell you how long I’ve been here, basting in shame, under the mother’s eaves for eight or maybe ten days? I am six or seven again and beholding to her. I know not to give cheek nor answer back. Monday to Thursday it’s the dry end of […]
My Dad’s American
We go up into the grey tower of the concrete stairs and you can smell the carroty smell of everybody’s sweat. I have a drink from my canteen. Wham! Somebody punches my back – water chokes up into my nose. Stephen’s grinning, but he’s so fast he’s already back in line with Indeep and Michael. […]
Stirrup and Anvil
I think my hummingbird has a transistor Radio in its heart, that it’s turquoise, and Picks up all the marbles from the garden, To pile them along the windowsill As though such things ripen. His spider Thread tongue shines, sugar-glazed As he drinks from the feeder. Where best to wrap an Ace bandage Is not […]
To be an Epicurean
Pleasure is the alpha and omega of a blessed life, our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever. Epicurus 1. The last time I abandoned you was at a ball game in between innings with a hotdog in my hand and a hat on my head. […]
Two Poems
Holiday Spilled purple on the cliffs like wine and green as if peppermint chews have melted down a gas fire, white person pink light, full as a teardrop, my heart clawed from wet sand smashed into pies. I wouldn’t be surprised if Eric Rohmer fell on my towel to explain the inevitability of going […]
Sofa
‘Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head’ — William Cowper, The Task, Book VI, ll85-86 Horsehair. In the 70s in a one-up-one-down shared with George (upstairs), who ironed his curly hair straight and favoured the cravat of Edward Fox in The Day of the Jackal. Back- to-back on the […]
Two Poems
Value Reflections on Joseph Mayer, at the Walker Art Gallery The jeweller reckons up his treasures – lets the words, proof of life, slip to silver goblets. From his window you watch the clock gauge Lime Street station. Departures trouble arrivals – there’s an ache in each welcoming kiss. Silence blooms through you like […]
Two Poems
Some Whales He is still wearing shorts and flip-flops in the office although summer ended for good three years ago now because it also wanted him to stop. He eats his soup like his bowl is a teat. He drives a small Japanese car with a high seating position. He has an ergonomic mouse and an ergonomic […]
The Lamplighter
i.m. Florence Winifred Bedford 20.10.1915 – 09.09.2008 He brought that warm glow the children liked, soft light for jump-the-chalk and pitch-and-toss, the giggling swirl of humbug heaven then kiss-the-girl-and-run-away. In Dunlop Place, Sam Carter was your champion lighter, a beaming glow-worm from dawn to dusk, lighting the dark as you ran home. ‘Light’s ghost,’ you […]
Twenty Three Fifteen
Twenty Three Fifteen Don’t look at the sun. * This is the last thing that you tell me before you leave. Or one of the last things. * You could look at it through a colander. That’s another. * The thought of standing in the garden with a colander on my head […]
Au hasard Pantomime
And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? Numbers 22:28 I And the donkey is beaten again. It does not […]
Two Poems
The Desert The desert is in the heart of your brother. Your brother doesn’t even read poetry, but keeps the desert’s book, with that dumb title, where you’ll see when you next scrounge dinner. But the desert’s just one of these kids who make bad jokes at a poem’s expense, you say. Your brother sticks […]
THE BABY IN THE DITCH
THE BABY FOUND MIRACULOUSLY UNHARMED IN THE DITCH TALKS ABOUT THE TRI-STATE TORNADO OF 1925 Don’t bother huddling in the dusty basement. Save your batteries for the TV remote, your candles for the wake. All those stories you’ve heard— how the southwest corner walls, built true by honest men, will hold while all else flattens— […]
Progressive Heart Failure
Another conversation about death: ‘You can stab your heart – you won’t feel it – the heart’s autonomous’ he says. I twist my daughter’s abandoned pipe cleaner into a blue, three-petalled flower. My father’s heart is doing its own thing – racing blood around his body too fast, forcing him to lie down. Only he […]
Two Poems
The Tightrope Walker The bearded grind-organ lady’s Quaker-bearded monkey, depressed elephants, sedated lions, insouciant ungulate dromedaries and belligerent camels will tomorrow be ushered into confinement. With these will go the washing-machine-cum- bisected-jet-engine that spins, that basin of sticky wisps, spun stratosphere that collects on a dipped stick to make edible pink insulation. Stacked like ark […]
Constellations, The Lowry, reviewed by Fran Slater
Constellations, The Lowry, 9th-13th June 2015 A stage surrounded by white balloons and some slightly hypnotic music. Two actors enter the room. Lights flicker through the balloons, alerting the audience to the fact that something different could be about to happen in front of them, a play that might test the boundaries. Then Marianne (Louise […]
Selima Hill, Jutland (Bloodaxe Books) £9.95, reviewed by Lucy Winrow
Hill’s sixteenth poetry collection Jutland unites the award-winning pamphlet Advice on Wearing Animal Prints and a new sequence, Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-Pits. The former is comprised of twenty-six short, single stanza poems, each titled and ordered alphabetically. The omniscient narrator introduces us to ‘Agatha’, a social outsider who is possibility on the autistic spectrum […]
Jon Ronson at The Met, Bury, reviewed by Fran Slater
Jon Ronson, The Met, Bury, 22nd May 2015 From his son’s first brush with the world’s worst swearword, to strange encounters with Iain Paisley, via Frank Sidebottom and experiences of secret terrorist meetings, Jon Ronson told tales of his extremely fascinating life with the humbleness and wit his fans have grown used to. He also […]
Talking to Strangers
‘The sooner the new motorway opens the better.’ I hesitated, holding back the impulse to say something about what we were doing, something like; We can’t just arrive into the hospital without talking about it. Eventually, I said ‘Rachel’. Just that; Rachel. like she had locked herself in a room and I was trying to […]