"Rigor of beauty is the quest." – WCW
Many of you in this lockdown are juggling extra responsibilities, working from home, wrangling small children or elderly relatives who won’t stay put, and perhaps bouncing off some walls. Please know that I am thinking of you, and I hope you are finding a few moments of peace each day. If that’s not you though,…
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…
…bewildered were the dead going about their days and nights in the dark putting their feet down carefully and finding themselves floating… – Alice Oswald, ‘Body’ …A light song of light swells up in the dark times, in wolf time and knife time, in knuckle and blood times; it hums a small tune in the…
This was a shorter reading month as I extended Pride reading up until July 5th, but I still managed to add three books to my ‘almost certainly on my shortlist for the year’ pile. I also just started writing about the first book (it was The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters) and realised that it…