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Ignition
A poem by Kevan Manwaring from his collection The Immanent Moment, posted on his blog in homage to his beloved motorbike that was mindlessly stolen and destroyed last week. It was his only transport and...

Anthony Nanson
May 21, 20191 min read


Fiction and Reality: The Ambiguous Writings of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Campbell McCluskie – by Alistair McNaught
Some contemporary scientists give the impression (whether deliberately or not) that the gap between what is known and what is yet to be discovered about life and the universe is too small to accommodate the existence of a deity. And yet, that gap remains...

Alistair McNaught
May 9, 201911 min read


Helen Moore’s new book The Mother Country
Helen Moore’s third major collection of poems, The Mother Country, is published by Awen on 1 May 2019. Helen is a poet of passion, power, and precision. She writes with a commitment to the world – the ecological, the political, the spiritual...

Anthony Nanson
Apr 30, 20193 min read


Jay Ramsay: A Celebration of His Life in Music, Poetry and Words
Join us on Saturday 4 May for Jay Ramsay: A Celebration of his Life in Music, Poetry and Words at St Lawrence Parish Church, Stroud at 7pm (6pm for vegetarian Indian food)...

Anthony Nanson
Apr 28, 20191 min read


Alida Gersie – Earthtales – review by Anthony Nanson
Alida Gersie’s celebrated Earthtales is, in large part, a collection of traditional tales that have to do with the earth and its creatures. Most are from cultures that have been endangered by the imperialism of Western modernity, which by the...

Anthony Nanson
Feb 6, 20192 min read


Kevin Crossley-Holland – The Magic Lands – review by Anthony Nanson
The Magic Lands is the paperback title of Kevin Crossley-Holland’s British Folk Tales. It’s a better title in that the collection covers Irish tales as well as ones from England, Scotland, and Wales. The Irish stories do tend to...

Anthony Nanson
Jan 20, 20192 min read


Cecil Collins – The Vision of the Fool – review by Anthony Nanson
I have a hazy memory, from my early twenties, of attending an exhibition of work by William Blake and also Cecil Collins at the Tate. It can’t have been an exhibition of major works, because what I remember are works

Anthony Nanson
Jan 10, 20192 min read


‘It’s All One Place’ – recollections of and tribute to my friend Jay Ramsay – by Diana Durham
My poems were still in the bottom drawer of my desk, and the very idea of performing them was challenging, when I first met Jay, around 30 years ago. Like many other poets before and after me, I got to experience Jay’s extraordinary kindness and

Diana Durham
Jan 9, 20192 min read


Some words about Jay Ramsay
The last time I saw Jay was at the launch of A Dance with Hermes in the Black Book Cafe and I remember how astonishingly well he looked despite the various ordeals of both illness and treatment he had so recently undergone. It felt characteristic of...

Lindsay Clarke
Jan 5, 20191 min read


Oxford launch of The Tragicall History of Campbell McCluskie by Alistair McNaught
The question that haunts Ian Alexander MacDuffy is why the playwright Campbell McCluskie was murdered at 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday 16 June 1954, for that was the very moment that Ian’s mother died giving birth to him. The coincidence suggests that...

Anthony Nanson
Jan 4, 20192 min read
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