GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
Best of 2019: Poetry
Poets pinpoint the collections they have most enjoyed reading over the last year
Unafraid: Deborah Alma
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
Jane Burn
I ENJOYED the well-curated Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry and the distilled man is free by p.a. morbid (BLER Press) and it was good to see anthologies such as For the Silent (Indigo Dreams) tackling necessary themes.
Fran Lock’s Raptures and Captures (Culture Matters) stunned, as did Pippa Little’s intricate Twist (Arc). Aching truth spoke through Clare Shaw’s Flood (Bloodaxe), while Imtiaz Dharker’s beautifully illustrated Over the Moon (Bloodaxe) left a lasting impression, as did the sensual, unafraid and feminist voice of Deborah Alma in Dirty Laundry (Nine Arches).
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ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician
A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis
Travelogue/reportage by Argentinean Maria Sonia Cristoff, and poetry by Peruvian Gaston Fernandez and Puerto Rican Cristina Perez Diaz