Peter Kenny
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Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, and grappling with what’s difficult
When I meet a difficult text, it invariably makes me think of the Genesis story of Jacob and the Angel, or at least its depictions in art. I like Jacob Epstein’s statue Jacob and the Angel (1940) in the Tate, but it is Gauguin’s Vision after the Sermon (1888) with women having just left church on…
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Antony Mair launches ‘Bestiary, and Other Animals’ at the Poetry Cafe
To The Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden last night, where Antony Mair launched his first full collection, Bestiary, and Other Animals, published by Live Canon. The Poetry Cafe was more crowded than I have ever seen it. Introduced by Helen Eastman, director of Live Canon, the reading was in two halves, reflecting the two sections…
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Slow progress and wide heart lead
Seven items from the imaginary news desk at Kenny Towers. A nice, not to mention speedy, review of TRUTHS A Telltale Press Anthology in London Grip. If you’d like to buy a copy, simply get in touch with me through this site. In other poetry news, I have a poem called Commuted on the Amaryllis site, and…
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Keeping Guernsey Legends vibrantly alive
Guernsey Legends by Jane Mosse & Frances Lemmon, Blue Ormer Publishing The stories in the gorgeously-produced Guernsey Legends by Jane Mosse and Frances Lemmon are not remote reconstructions from some antique past. One story, about an enormous spectre of a nanny goat, played a real part in my own island childhood. Le Coin de la Biche was a…
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Between beauty and terror
Thus the blue hour comes by Tess Jolly, Indigo Dreams Publishing I love Tess Jolly’s poems, and I posted my look at her first collection Touchpapers here. Her latest, Thus the blue hour comes from Indigo Pamphlets confirmed the promise of her first pamphlet with what is, in my view, a beautifully coherent and even stronger collection.…
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Two things the demons taught me
January and February? Gah! What are they for other than self-flagellation? With festivities just a liver-scarring memory, the nights long, and the days hatefully grey… I usually use the first part of the year to brood like Milton’s Satan on the vast abyss of my shortcomings. But this year I did something different. I tidied up.…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 