A word on the title. Airtins doesn’t mean metallic food or drink containers which have become airborne or – emptied of their contents – now hold only air. Airtins is a Scots…
Category: REVIEWS
REVIEW: Autumn by Anthony Howell (Manubook) – Neil Fulwood
It would be erroneous – and stupid – to say that cracking the spine on Anthony Howell’s Autumn is as daunting as settling down (or, equally, squaring up) to The Odyssey or…
REVIEW: Full Body Reclaim by Caroline Stancer (Five Leaves) – Neil Fulwood
An established figure on the East Midlands literary scene as one half (with Birgit Friedrich) of the poetry collective Dandelions, Caroline Stancer makes her publishing debut with Full Body Reclaim, a handsomely…
FAR FROM NOTTINGHAM: THE INSIDE TRACK ON ALAN SILLITOE’S THE GENERAL – Neil Fulwood
Although well-received in some quarters (“Sillitoe scores a hat trick” – Punch), The General confounded many people. Highly anticipated after the one-two of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of…
REVIEW: The Alderbank Wade by Alan Morrison (Culture Matters) – Neil Fulwood
Read any good verse novels lately? Personally, I can’t think of anything truly outstanding in that most challenging of verse forms since Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, published seven years ago, and Anne…
REVIEW: Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark by Cassandra Peterson (Hachette) – Neil Fulwood
Cassandra Peterson has had quite the life. Bullying mother. Rough diamond father. Traumatic childhood accident (pan; boiling water). Socially awkward. Suddenly voluptuous. Go-go dancer in her mid-teens. Showgirl while still a good…
ME AND ARTHUR SEATON: A PERSONAL ODYSSEY THROUGH SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING: Neil Fulwood
There had been working class novels before. But they’d generally been written by middle class authors slumming it for the sake of material. When Alan Sillitoe burst onto the literary scene in…
TESTIMONIES FROM GAZA: Two new books on Gaza reviewed by Neil Fulwood
We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth, edited by Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey (Hutchinson Heinemann) Who Will Tell My Story? – A Gaza Diary by Anonymous (Guardian Faber) The genesis…
Fawzia Muradali Kane – Guaracara (Carcanet): Book Review by Wayne Burrows
The writer and architect Fawzia Muradali Kane’s third book, and her second full length collection, Guaracara, emerges almost fifteen years after her debut, Tantie Diablesse (Waterloo Press, 2011), and more than a…
REVIEW: Release the Sausages! edited by Andy Croft (Culture Matters) – Neil Fulwood
There is a technique in poetry, borrowed from Apophatic Theology, called the via negativa, whereby attention is drawn to the subject by dint of its absence. This new anthology, subtitled Poems for…
REVIEW: My Secret Life: Selected Poems by Krisztina Tóth, trans. George Szirtes (Bloodaxe) – Neil Fulwood
REVIEW: My Secret Life: Selected Poems by Krisztina Tóth, trans. George Szirtes (Bloodaxe)
REVIEW: Blossom Hibbert
REVIEW: suddenly, it’s now by Blossom Hibbert (Leafe Press) There is a strand of poetry, among a certain demographic of its twenty-something practitioners, which is increasingly informed by workshops, degree courses, social…
Recent Translations of Yiannis Ritsos – Alan Baker
REVIEW: Recent Translations of Yiannis Ritsos Alan Baker In Secret: Versions of Yiannis Ritsos by David Harsent (Enitharmon Press) A Broken Man in Flower: Versions of Yiannis Ritsos by David Harsent (Bloodaxe…