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Joseph Hutchison enjoys some extraordinary restraint

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:06:00 +0000

“Just a note here about a slim Salt Publishing publication I recently read, Siân Hughes’s The Missing. The Missing is a first book, but it’s author is no novice at life.”

Peter McLachlin celebrates Hughes’s use of idiom

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:00:00 +0000

“Siân Hughes’ use of idiomatic language is superb, and often has the effect of lulling the reader into a feeling of the quotidian, leaving him or her unprepared for the poem’s ending.”

Tony Williams on Siân Hughes

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:01:00 +0000

“Towards the end of last week I read Sian Hughes’s The Missing, shortlisted for this year’s Forward Prize for Best First Collection. I haven’t read the other books on the shortlist so I can’t comment on who should win, but I can say that this one’s really good – a brief, affecting, plain and magnificent book. Read it if you get the chance.”

Matthew Stewart on Siân Hughes

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:58:00 +0000

“For once, a collection outdoes its blurb – as mentioned in a previous post, “The Missing” is an exceptional book in the context of contemporary U.K. poetry.

“Siân Hughes’ subject matters in “The Missing” are signposted from the start. Her lost third child and the end of a relationship are themes that run though the book. “The Send-Off”, for example, is a superb poem and a winner of the Arvon Prize. Its value lies in peeling layer after layer off a story, telling it through details, encouraging us to explore and identify ourselves with it. This last point is a key success – Siân Hughes engages us incredibly well.”

Siân Hughes longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:07:00 +0000

The only poetry on the longlist is The Missing by Siân Hughes, a collection that deals with parenting, illness, loss, regret and ill-fated love.

Read more …

Ivy Alvarez: author of the Dumbfoundry Blog

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:20:46 +0000

Ivy Alvarez

dumbfoundry : Poetry news, poetry blogs, poetry magazines, poetry journals, poetry sites, poetry links, etc. Ivy Alvarez (author of Mortal) is one of the original dumbfounders.

Ivy covers Rob A. Mackenzie and Andrew Philiip in upcoming blogs.

Megan Taylor Blog Stories

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:49:05 +0000

Megan Taylor

Megan Taylor Blog Stories

Megan’s blog features random ramblings about writing and publishing, along with some of her own short stories and the odd interactive blog story too. You can also find it on LiveJournal and MySpace.

Megan is an author, currently living in Nottingham. Her debut How We Were Lost was published by Flame Books in 2007 and she has recently completed her second novel, Before the Light.

To find out more about her writing, please visit her website www.megantaylor.info

Todd Swift’s Eyewear

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:06:56 +0000

Todd Swift

Todd Swift is a Core Tutor with The Poetry School, and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University. His recent book of critical essays on Anglo-Quebec poetry, Language Acts, co-edited with Jason Camlot, was a finalist for the 2007 Gabrielle Roy Prize. (See Jacket Magazine.) He is the editor of many international poetry anthologies, including Poetry Nation, and 100 Poets Against The War; and the poetry editor of Nthposition, one of the UK’s leading places for poetry online. In 2005, he edited a special section on The Young Canadian Poets for New American Writing. His The Young British Poets section came out in the 2008 issue of The Manhattan Review, featuring Salt poets such as Isobel Dixon, Luke Kennard and Chris McCabe. As Oxfam Great Britain’s first Poet-in-residence, 2004-2008, he ran the Oxfam Poetry Series, and edited the CDs, Life Lines and Life Lines 2 – Poets for Oxfam. He has had four full collections of poems published by small modernist press (founded by Louis Dudek via Pound) DC Books in Montreal. A poem of his has been selected for The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008. Poems of his have appeared in The Guardian, Jacket, and Poetry Review. Seaway: New and Selected Poems is available now from Salmon Publishing, Ireland, 2008.

Eyewear is a blogzine chiefly edited by Todd Swift, but featuring weekly guest poets, and regular guest reviews. It focuses on poetry, politics, and popular culture, and often questions how these intertwine in the worlds of new media. It’s been running since summer 2004, with over 1,000 posts, and been several times quoted in The Guardian, and elsewhere.

Todd will be featuring Katy Evans-Bush on her virtual book tour A Conversation About Dreams …

DoveGreyReader on Cyclone

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:23:52 +0000

Cyclone asked dovegreyreader to introduce her blog and her reading life …

http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/

Dovegreyreader

I am a Gt Ormond Street trained paediatric nurse by training and until recently had worked as a health visitor in rural Devon for thirty years. Books have always formed a huge part of my life and I started dovegreyreader scribbles in March 2006 to explore whether there was an audience of like-minded readers out there … there is, and last time I checked they came from over ninety countries across the world. I’m also fortunate enough to live in splendid isolation with my family in rural Devon and occasionally I share a slice of country life and my other passions, quilting and sock-knitting, but mostly it’s books, books and more books. I love to share thoughts on my reading, subjectively and emotionally, how a book has fired my imagination, how a book has made me feel, what has it made me think about, what does it make me want to read next, why would I press this book on you if we met in the street?

Whilst working in the NHS, where using my imagination landed me in deep water, I had to be clinical and objective, now at dovegreyreader scribbles I can be a flouncy bouncy book Tigger on a daily basis.

I don’t and won’t do excoriating criticism; the blog is about reading for pleasure and sharing my love of good books. If I’ve loved a book you’ll know about it because this is all about sharing that bookaholic passion for reading that so many of us have. I read widely across the genres and will never write about a book that hasn’t touched me or made a resounding impact of some description and if I write about it I’ve read it, cover to cover . Comments are the oxygen of dgr scribbles and I love to hear other people’s thoughts and feedback either in comments or by email.

If you’ve got this far, congratulations and thank you for reading so why not take a trip to beautiful Devon via dgr scribbles where you’ll find some great reading ideas, woolly socks, warm quilts plus there’s always a cup of virtual tea in the virtual pot!

dovergreyreader will be covering Charles Lambert’s The Scent of Cinnamon in January 2009.

Elizabeth Baines’ Blog

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:26:06 +0000

Elizabeth Baines

Elizabeth Baines is a writer of prose fiction and plays. Her blog elizabethbaines.blogspot subtitled ‘How to be a writer without ending up sozzled, behind bars or insane‘ is a diary of her writing life — her thoughts about the writing process and the writing life, with occasional comment on the books she reads and reports of the literary events she attends. She also writes the literary commentary blog Fictionbitch.

Elizabeth’s collection of short stories, Balancing on the Edge of the World, is published by Salt and she is currently working on a new collection of short stories, one of which appears in the first issue of Horizon, another having come third in the Raymond Carver Competition 2008.