"Rigor of beauty is the quest." – WCW
I needed the God of my childhood to be useful so I folded him, shaped his pages into wings. Cranes at first, then more challenging roosters, swallows, owls. I pinched edges, split clauses to make word plumage. I fractured Leviticus into pleats. […] I bought Reckless Paper Birds, John McCullough’s third collection, after opening it…
The hunt is on: through ashes, photographs and lists, through bone and prayer, through violations – from ‘Utterance’ Jacqueline Saphra’s previous collection All My Mad Mothers, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2017, and she returns with a stunning companion collection in which it is her father who takes centre stage. The poems…
A very colour-coordinated group today, but chosen on merit I promise! I read a lot more during April, mostly because of the Easter holidays, and also because I finished off a few books I’d been reading for a while. Again, it was very hard to choose, and I toyed with the idea of allowing myself…
Hello! It’s been a while since I posted, as I never really intended this to be a blog for general chat, but a way to keep a record of projects. I’ve wanted for a while now to start a close-reading series, and I hope this will be the first post of many. I’ve always been…