Reviews
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Exploring Janet Sutherland’s poetry
There are perhaps only a couple-of-dozen poets I find myself returning to time and again. In the last year, however, Janet Sutherland has become one of them. I own her four collections from Shearsman Books, which are, in order of publication, Burning the Heartwood, Hangman’s Acre, Bone Monkey, and Home Farm. Each of these books contains an embarrassment of…
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Madagascar in Eastbourne
I snuck into the final dress rehearsal for Madagascar last night, in the final run through by The RHT Community Production at the Royal Hippodrome Theatre, Eastbourne which starts its run today. This is just the kind of initiative I love – seeing such vibrant community theatre gladdens the heart. This production of the show Madagascar, A Musical Adventure was…
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The magnetism of the mise-en-scène
In The Cinema by Stephen Bone, published by Playdead Press I bought a copy of In The Cinema at the end of last year, and find these poems have lingered in my mind longer than most. It was the careful mise-en-scène in several of the poems, which first began to intrigue me. Stephen Bone’s choices of objects lends the poems a…
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A poet between worlds
Touchpapers by Tess Jolly, published by Eyewear Aviator 2016 Series There is a magic and darkly fairytale quality in Tess Jolly’s work which I greatly admire. The poetry is the product of a powerful imagination. In several poems a brother is depicted as a magical other, and their sibling relationship seems closest when dressing up, or playing imaginative games. my legs swinging,…
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Nina Conti on the edge of darkness
I saw Nina Conti’s In Your Face tour at the Brighton Dome last Saturday. The climax of her show, when she had seven people up on stage, wearing her masks on demonstrated her sheer bravery, improvisational skill and speed of thought in remembering all the accents and attributes she had given them. She had three moments…
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The darkness is real
Noir by Charlotte Gann published by HappenStance Press Noir is a word with a freight of associations, but in the title poem of Charlotte Gann’s first full collection the protagonist enters what seems to be a cinema where ‘I only ever catch a moon-thin glimpse /of the projectionist’s face…’ This fits happily with the film noir atmosphere in many of these poems.…
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Four stars from BroadwayBaby
Absolutely chuffed by a great review of ‘A Glass of Nothing’ by Charley Ville. “Writer Peter Kenny’s and actor-director Beth Symons’s A Glass of Nothing knows exactly what it’s doing – and who it’s doing it for. The very first lines pop like a Formula 1 celebration and we are delightfully bathed in a stream of deliciously…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 