Review by Colin Dardis of "Bunting’s Honey" by Moya Cannon

A persistent theme is the danger of forgetting, of lost words and times. "And Now The Babies" laments that "no one can figure out again, | how to give peace a chance." In "Planting Roses in Baicheng," set in the Chinese city that has seen its fair share of border changes over the years, an old, local woman contemplates as "a witness from inside history" and wonders about her history. This pondering on the past is built upon in "All Gone," a key poem in the collection, which recognises the evanescent nature of family events:

          And a century later
         hardly anyone remembers this
         nor do they really matter,
         the trillions of family stories
         which, every day, drift down
         a billion rivulets
         into Lethe’s indifferent waters.

The collection’s title poem celebrates Edward Bunting, famed for his work in collecting and notating Irish folk music. The reader can’t help but draw a comparison here between Bunting and Cannon, the latter collecting stories in her poems that otherwise would be lost, from Tyrone villages to the River Saōne to Venice to Jilin Province. In "Turlough Hill," Cannon notes that we will never truly learn of the history of the site "because nobody wrote | nobody will ever know." Cannon excels in letting us know of hidden wonders, of human adventures and pastoral splendours, and it is from within nature that some of the strongest poems arise.

The opening section of the collection is a series of eco-poems, ablaze with appreciations for scenery and wildlife. However, there are notes of warning. In "Die-back," the poet warns us that

          A species, even, can disappear discreetly,
          with no official count-down,
          without the drama
          of an asteroid or an ice-age

Similarly, in "For the Birds," we learn of pigeon flocks that had "darkened America’s skies," reduced to the last of its year dying "imprisoned, in a Cincinnati zoo." Cannon’s eco-poems are a standout of the collection. In the thrall of nature, greeted by a vision of lake and sky, Cannon wryly notes a crowd of spectators jostling "closer to a roped cliff edge | where a hundred smartphones are held aloft." Contrast this with the poet’s own discovery of a corrie lake in "A Quarrel with the Lexiographers," noting her how "heart leaps" amidst the "skree and heather"; Cannon’s experience feels realer, void of the prism of technology. Indeed, in a poem titled "A Technology," Cannon charts the history and advancement of typesetting, but frets if "a millennium from now | will anyone, perchance, survive" to read our current "cacophony" of "whirring symbols."

In "Pascal," the poem opens with a quote from the French physicist: "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me." Cannon wonders "what lies | beyond the rim of a universe"; such contemplation of the expanse of existence is amusing, given that Pascal also famously wrote "All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone." And yet these poems, contrastingly, make the reader want to go outside and explore a mountainside or watch a sunrise, and revel in "that honeycomb of hours spent laughing and talking" in human contact. Although there are notes of sadness and grief, these poems are so rich in the celebration of nature and connection that the reader is enlivened, even emboldened, at the collection’s end. In "Old Friend," fittingly the closing poem, we are reminded that there will be "nothing left of us in this world | but what we have remembered to give away." With these poems, Cannon has ensured that what she leaves behind adds to the beauty of the world.

About the reviewer
Colin Dardis is a neurodivergent writer, editor and sound artist, his work has been published widely throughout Ireland, the UK and the US. He co-hosts the long-running open mic poetry night, Purely Poetry, in Belfast, and is editor of the Poem Alone blog.

Review by Éadaoín Lynch of "Exiles Across Time" by Hua Ai

"How far will hunger drive a body over borders?"

Ai’s debut chapbook is driven by an enterprising voice, and a new angle on age-old stories of birth, death, conflict and resilience. It opens with six short announcements or portents, called "Echoes," each in turn repeated in a longer-form poem – a neat example of form mirroring subject. What is remarkable about Ai’s work is her blend of contrasted conceits, political history, and mythic register, recalling elements from the work of Anna Akhmatova or Mahmoud Darwish.

Being an ESL poet, Ai’s language and syntax are reflective of the book’s thematic "exile," as the poems themselves bear the journey of translation. This journey is further contextualised in her Author’s Note, where she shares that, in her native language Mandarin, "meaning travels under the surface; readers are trusted to dive." Transposing a lyric convention from one language into another is not an easy feat, particularly where connotation and cultural context are inevitably lost in the move. Ai, however, is fearless and the confidence bears out in original, inventive poems.

The narrative focus in Exiles Across Time combines gothic and nature imagery, mythos, and symbolism in a way that rebuffs the confessional mode, or what Ai calls "English’s appetite for direct address." The chimeras of life, death and rebirth are corroborated by sweeping metaphors, such as, "History splits awake," "Ice breaks its winter silence," "Existence is a slit throat," and "In woods where history hangs itself." Here is a pastoral poetic that looks as much at destruction as creation – a fitting approach for a work that is concerned so much with exile. 

From initial mythic imaginings of maternal sacrifice and patriarchal domination to a resurgence of hope amid the hunt, Ai turns sharply in "Echo III" to a bruising account of the siege of Sarajevo, illustrating a clear reality, even in ambitious metaphors. This is followed closely in "Echo IV" by a call to action – "a million fingers pull the tyrant down" – to the final "Echoes" of self-fashioning and reawakening. Through these works, Ai charts a journey that is intergenerational, international, and grounded in political upheaval and brutality. Exiles Across Time is an auspicious debut that favours promising work to come.

About the reviewer
Éadaoín Lynch is an Irish writer & researcher based in Edinburgh. They are one of the Typewronger Writers-in-Residence for 2025, and co-editor of Re·creation: A Queer Poetry Anthology with Alycia Pirmohamed. Their poem "Brogue" was Commended for the Magma 2024 Poetry Competition by Raymond Antrobus. Fierce Scrow, their debut poetry pamphlet, launched in 2022 with Nine Pens Press.

Review by Debasish Lahiri of "Debris" by Daniel Huws

Sometimes poetry can be the disturbance of clear blue skies, shaking the airline passengers, briefly, from their polite boredom into mild alarm, but merely coaxing a bird to bring out all its dance moves in a mid-air ballet. A quiet, precise quire of our disquiets, the poetry of Daniel Huws brings dynamism of drama, that of the recondite garret or the familial dinner table, to a laconic, punctilious close like the sibilant witness of sunlight through the window of the same room. Huws has always had that Welsh gift of using nature to narrate the seasons of "man," to feel the winds (and smoke) of time in the hair, and the tug at the hem of their clothes. Everything, or nothing, is mundane, or mythical.

In Debris, poetry from his two earlier collections Noth (1972) and The Quarry (1999) is collected alongside "uncollected" and occasional poems. Huws’s tribute to Christopher Reid in his "Author’s Preface" can equally be a testament to his own craft as a poet. Patience, a quality Huws admires in his editor, is his own great forte. When the needle on a seismograph is going mad as Hieronymo, when the world – of one individual, or the world as a civilization sees it – is going down, Huws’s poetry holds it all in the unshaking crucible of its palm, without "a single cumbersome word or phrase" or “a jarring note." The clarion call of mortality sounds through the bacchanalian mist of youth, clearly, in "The Party": "He took off his flesh and lay in his bones." 

Burnishing parergons – small moments, contemplations that sit askew to the straight highroads of existence, realizations that are of no consequence, but great import – with suppleness and poise, with an unerring eye and acute ear, Huws often produces such lines – "days of dying bred spite in our tongue" and "to have strayed in a wood which seemed like home."  

Huws pulses with the dark-vowelled flow that we find in Dylan Thomas, but he keeps that well behind an English dyke. This is his particular Welsh-ness. However, like sand between fingers that tide does sometimes breach: 

          With the voice of a flower, the voice of a child,
          You cried against the iniquity
          Of blackness, blackness clammy and choking
          …
          Your only resource was to flourish death
          In a brilliant flare of uncomprehending.

The misted past catches up with us as the poet conjures for us places, straight out of the gizzard of time, and we feel a sudden damp in our boots from that old bog of years, or quarry:

          Ages ago,
          And I still stand
          Caught in the long afternoon
          In the old quarry,
          Face to the wall,
          Counting to twenty.

Huws’s Debris is a reminder that the pluck and spirit of "small" beings – women, men, children or flowers – ensure that the world does not end tonight.

          The slow way home was through the wood
          Which creaked with age
           …
          And in the November storm
          The red campion battled so late.

The occasional poems in the volume (addressed to Ted Hughes, Jean Hawkes and Lucas Myers) are rhymed with a friendliness and accord that is the bedrock of friendship that has withstood the ravages of time. Daniel Huws writes like the restorer of old paintings, the light that is always there in the dark-overtaken masterpieces and just needs brightening. If poetry can turn to sound a silence that is ever-growing in us, around us, as in Huws, then it will have succeeded in its labour.

About the reviewer
Debasish Lahiri has nine collections of poetry to his credit, the latest being A Certain Penance of Light (2025). Lahiri is the recipient of the Prix-du Merite, Naji Naaman Literary Prize 2019.

Interview with Duncan Gill

Duncan Gill is a British author, born in England, Hemel Hempstead, in1987. The Ancestral Odyssey is the name of his epic fantasy book series that started with The Utopian Dream and was independently published in 2016 to positive reviews. Gill has published six volumes under The Ancestral Odyssey and is currently writing its continuation - a series that thus far has captured the essence of traditional fantasy storytelling, while reaching to bring fans of the genre something new. His goal is to honour what epic fantasy is but he strives to experiment and expand upon it, hoping to demonstrate that it can be more than what was once thought.

His official website is here. On X: @MegasTeque

Interviewed by Joyce Bou Charaa

JBC: What first inspired you to become a writer? Was there a specific memory or experience that drove you to start writing stories?

DG: That’s a good question, and unfortunately, I don’t have a definitive answer. I believe it all came from a concept that slowly formed in my early teens from various places, but I suppose this desire to write, this need to forge my own story was always there under the surface, it just needed some help to be discovered, and then of course once it was unearthed, you can begin to learn, refine, and polish the craft at your own leisure. Bu, going back before that moment if I may? I remember coming away from books as a child, walking out of films and finishing certain video games - I was left with annoying thoughts of what would come next and what would that look like? When such titles did not continue, I’d begin to craft the narrative myself in my own head, and because I grew up in a time without the noise of social media, I craved long walks and lengthy car journeys, but more specifically, I craved time alone, because only when I was alone could I indulge in this meditative state assisted with music that enabled me to continue the story of x, y and z, stories I’d build simply by thinking about them. The beauty of this was it could be anything I wanted it to be, and I believe that was my initiation to what was coming next, a project of my own making, one that I felt had to be written.

As for inspirations, I’m usually drawn to stories complete with their own worlds, and that world can look like anything so long as it’s grounded in its own unique signature and style. I like worlds that feel lived in, worlds that have been thought out, worlds with the weight of history, with wear and tear at the corners, worlds that encapsulate both beauty, danger with a lick of mystery, while enriched in their own fantastical setting. If done right, anything can be believed.

To no one’s surprise, Lord of the Rings is a champion when it comes to world building, Harry Potter is indeed excellent, worthy of a mention for inspiration. I think all modern fantasy writers have to have read or at least indulged in these worlds, but I personally leaned further into Tolkien having started to read the trilogy at sixteen and finishing it at seventeen while visiting my Grandparents in Suffolk, which was a year or so into creating my own fantasy world set in a place called Equis. However, before I discovered Tolkien and Rowling and everything hence, I remember reading and becoming invested in a magazine that belonged to my elder brother called The Ancestral Trail; the first issue was published by Marshal Cavendish in 1992, while its final issue was released in 1994. Written by Fergus Fleming and Ian Probert and illustrated by Julek Heller, this trail follows a story that is very much in line with what inspires me and my own work: a dark, fantasy tale born out of an unsettling world of magic and monsters. Of course, there are so many other inspirations, such as Amy Hennig’s Legacy of Kain series that’s set in the rotting, gothic, vampiric world of Nosgoth, Lorne Lanning's Oddworld, and the biomechanical worlds depicted by the artist H. R. Giger, the mind behind the universe of the nightmarish Star Beast, better known as Alien. Such brilliant works all meld together; they mix with your own unique senses and perception, and from this ooze you slowly but surely build.

JBC: You've written six volumes of your fantasy series, The Ancestral Odyssey. Could you tell us more about the book idea and how it started? Also, can you share some behind-the-scenes moments from crafting the plot?

DG: Sure. The idea is to create a series of books coupled with their own themes distinct from each other, yet at their core tell a story about inheritance, what we pass down to future generations. This thread might not be clear to begin with, but as the stories unfold, it all centres around a question; what is the most important thing to inherit? What is the most important thing worth preserving? These ideas, loose and flimsy at the time, became my base, and from this foundation grew what we see today. It’s hard to pin down where it all exactly started; as I mentioned earlier, when I was a child I was always lost in my own head making things up, doing everything I could to stay in that place rather than face bitter reality, but if I had to accurately point to a time where Odyssey started, I’d say it was around 2002, perhaps 2003. It didn’t exist as a book back then, but instead it was a humble collection of sketches, hand-written descriptions of locations, a simple hand drawn map, and loads of notes scribbled on the backs of receipts from where I worked at the time. Despite not having a goal or endgame in mind, I continued to work on it, I kept building it for reasons I was uncertain of, but something was telling me that this was a calling, that there was something here worth exploring, and that’s what I did, I kept building it, I kept adding to it little by little and expanding this jargon until semblances of ideas formed. Were all these ideas any good? No, not all of them, but those that I believe are good have either been executed, or are still being tended to today, and are yet to flower.

A few years later, I’d submit this huge body of work as part of a college project in 2006, a project which earned me a place in university in 2007, and that was when I started writing the book in my dorm, and the book was called Mythology: Seeds of War. This is where I encountered my first problem as a storyteller. Seeds of War wasn’t fit for a beginning, there was already too much going on, most of the characters were well established, the journey was already in full swing, huge events had taken place that deserved to be experienced, and there was no real weight to the dialogue. It didn’t feel right to start here, so I decided to shelve it for what I thought would be a short time (eighteen years, give or take) and got to work on something that feels more and more like a history now. I dialled the clock back twenty years on the timeline and got to work on the first instalment which was called Mythology: The Perfect World, only for it to evolve after my backpacking travels of Western and Eastern Europe in 2016 into The Ancestral Odyssey: The Utopian Dream, a story focusing on two protagonists, a young General, Lethaniel Presian and a spiritual Star Caller, Isabelle Verano - two characters who fight on the same side but in very different ways. Lethaniel relies on his swordplay, his military strategy and brute force to survive, while Isabelle depends upon her magic, her faith, and mysterious foresight. These two characters at times cross paths, but ultimately there are two different stories that orbit around finding one’s place and one’s purpose in a beautiful yet unforgiving world, a world called Equis, where word spreads fast and mercy is something of a rarity.

JBC: Out of all your characters, which one is your favourite? What makes this character so unique to you?

DG: I do have a soft spot for one character in particular, someone who I will detail as to why in a moment, but before I get there, I have to say that this question is like asking someone to choose your favourite film, book or band, sure you have a handful you immediately think of, but every so often the order switches around and you just need "that one" for that moment in time.

I feel that Alexius Marsay, Lethaniel’s best friend, is a favourite. The feedback I’ve gotten suggests people like him, and having re-read The Utopian Dream recently in preparation for the audiobook, his lines are witty, he often succumbs to his vices and adds some much-needed comic relief to an otherwise bleak story. I feel like Alexius is someone the everyday man can relate to, he loves to smoke, he loves to drink, he loves to eat and sleep in, he enjoys the company of women, he usually says what everyone is thinking and yet somehow, despite it all, he delivers each and every time, becoming that guy you can rely on, fighting with a ferocity that matches those of a knight's status.

Counter to this is Ridian Messiah, a character who fulfils the role as one of the Odyssey's key antagonists, and this guy I believe steals every scene he’s in - for example, the scene where he makes himself known to Lethaniel and his group, appearing rather casually before a burning cathedral, standing up to our heroes with a quiet stoicism, an unwavering confidence enriched with fiendish cunning, which gets the better of Lethaniel time and time again, exploiting his weaknesses that go beyond his ability to wield a sword, a skill that Ridian too is highly proficient with.

The character that is unique to me, though, I think is and always will be Isabelle. She’s special, because when I made the decision to shelve Seeds of War and write The Utopian Dream, that takes place two decades earlier, Isabelle was the character that more or less guided me through this world, and what I find even more peculiar is that I wasn’t the only one she guides, creating a narrative that wasn’t intentionally planned, but one I am thankful that formulated. Isabelle will always be special in that regard.

JBC: If you wanted to choose a new genre outside of fantasy, what would it be and why?

DG: Horror is actually my favourite genre for a plethora of reasons; it even trumps my love of fantasy. Horror is almost always the genre I turn to when it comes to selecting films to watch, books to read or games to play. There is something oddly fascinating and daring about exploring those parts of your psyche that genuinely disturb you, whether this involves an external tormentor or something that comes from within. The genre is fluid, it is malleable and when it’s done right, when a piece of horror well and truly finds you, it has the power to keep you in that space for hours, and in some cases, days.

I’ve also learned when thinking, studying and writing about larger-than-life topics, these steps inevitably slip into dark and disturbing places. If you don’t like the horror genre, of course that’s acceptable, but whether you like it or not, horror exists all around us, it is never far away, you cannot avoid it forever; the genre is but another avenue to explore a very real presence of the human condition, and that is important.

Please, do not misunderstand, I write in fantasy because it suits a personal desire, a need that can only be satisfied with the creation of a world married to a massive landscape with many characters to navigate, and when it comes to consuming fantasy, I’ll certainly indulge. I also feel like I’m better at writing fantasy than horror; just because I find horror more compelling in most cases does not mean I’m better at crafting it, fantasy comes out on top in that regard. However, I find that horror is easier to digest: where fantasy is an occasional visit, horror is something weekly. Some of the best examples of horror I can think of include the short story called "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," written by Harlan Ellison in 1967. The video game Soma, developed by Frictional Games and released in 2015, is easily up there as one of the most disturbing games and concepts I’ve ever played, and as for House of Leaves written by Mark Z. Danielewski and published in 2000, what can I say: never in my life have I ever been terrified of a blank page, but this book achieved it. It’s unsettling to say the least, expertly written and furthermore, it can only exist in a book format, which makes it fascinating.

JBC: Lately, we've been seeing a rise in book-to-screen adaptations. What's your take on this trend? Do you envision The Ancestral Odyssey being adapted into film one day?

DG: I think Hollywood is in a spot of turmoil right now. I’m not exactly sure when it began, but we’ve been through approximately fifteen to twenty years of non-stop superhero movies adapted from old comic books. Some of these films are very good and adapted faithfully, most however are fun watches that ride that line of mediocrity, but the more recent ones have just been content for content's sake. They’re forgetful and are like to media junk food, that’s the vibe I’ve been getting when browsing the web or talking amongst friends, and I cannot argue with that. The era of the superhero flick is coming to an end. Sure, there will always be one or two sprouting up here and there, but I think we can all agree that the peak of superheroes was the Avengers finale. Since then, it’s just been on a downward spiral, and Hollywood must know that this once-deep well is running dry.

So, where do they turn to next and what can they capitalise on? Books have and always will be the best resource Hollywood can dip into, and I think that is the answer to their problem in the hunt for new ideas, because I don’t know about you, but I am getting sick of all these remakes. I am seeing a lot of popular video games being adapted to the screen, The Last of Us, Resident Evil, Fallout to name a few. I’m not opposed to this, I love gaming, so long as the material is treated with respect, remains true to the source material and is crafted by people who know what they’re doing, to make something that honours the artist or artists that made it originally. Therein lies our problem, film makers these days and their writers often don’t know what they’re doing - whether they lack the wisdom and knowledge to translate the source material to the screen or are in thrall to the committee, the board of directors, the suits (as I like to call them) who are only in it to turn a profit, caring little for the actual art. Either way, what used to be exciting news, hearing about a classic game or book being adapted into a film, is now something to dread. Yes, I’ve been hurt far too many times now to get excited, and this segues nicely into my thoughts on a TAO (The Ancestral Odyssey) adaptation, if there ever was one.

There was a time when this was all I could think about; the fantasy, the idea of TAO being adapted into a film or perhaps a TV show, seeing this world and all these characters coming to life that mirror their personas on the page - this was something to aspire to; it would be exciting, and a dream come true. However, in the current climate, and with what I have seen with other book to film adaptations, I’m not so sure it would ever be allowed or could work if greenlit, from both a bureaucratic and practical point of view. In order for it to work, the project would need to be managed by people who genuinely cared, by people who are talented artists in their own right and would want to make the best collection of movies possible, because if anyone knows anything about movie making, it's that it is a team effort, no one man or woman can do everything, and only when everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet can you then hope for the best outcome, which is a well-written story, coupled with flawless acting and magnificent visuals. Also, and I am not even sure that this is possible, but I would want to organise a contract where I am on the board, to be part of the writing team, involved with the casting and would have a say on the direction of the story. This is my vision, after all, and of course I want what’s best for it. So, if by some miracle this does get the attention it needs, to be adapted onto the big screen by a dedicated, passionate team, and if by another miracle I’d have some executive power, then yes, let’s go, let’s get it done, let’s minimalize the inevitable heartbreaks and let’s make it into the best it can be, and I promise you it would be something spectacular. But if not, if it is to fall into the wrong hands and my power over the decision making was severely limited or, worse, stolen and undermined, then no, it’s never going to happen. I’ll be happy with just the completion of the books and have them sitting on a shelf collecting dust.

JBC: We know that you're working on an audiobook for Volume 1. How is the process going so far? And do you think audiobooks are becoming more appealing to readers today?

DG: It’s frustrating. Working on an independently made audiobook really locks you into your workstation. Once you start working on a session, you quite literally cannot be doing anything else, you need your eyes, your ears and 100% of your mind focused on the task at all times, and before you know it, that glorious welcoming morning sun is gone and it's night time, and to make things worse, you’ve not eaten anything and most of the tea and coffee you made has gone cold. You might be thinking that the solid stretches of work would yield something to be proud of and justify the days lost to the project, but when you analyse what you’ve accomplished, it’s not nearly as much as you hoped for. In fact, more often it's the case that you’ve achieved very little for something that is at best, satisfactory. I suppose because I am fresh to this new media, because I am still learning how to use the software and figuring out what works best, it’s reasonable to think that my frustrations thus far might be down to simple growing pains, especially when it comes to using AI voice techniques. That being said, the voice I am using does belong to a real voice actress, all I’ve done is recorded, cloned, and trained the voice to save on time (ironically) and money, money that I simply do not have in 2025. Had I the resources to do this the traditional way, then absolutely I would be all over it, but that is not the reality I live in, so with said advancements in AI, I’ve met the technology half way, meaning I’ve worked with someone talented, a singer-songwriter Emmy Lila, and with her consent (of course) cloned her voice, so I don’t have to be in studio for hundreds of hours. I did think despite the setbacks, I was making headway, but alas I learned that the voice needed a little more range. So, I contacted Miss Lila and to my delight, she came through with some more recordings; however, when the voice was updated, I needed to pass another verification checkpoint, and the only way to do this was to contact Emmy again, but tragedy struck! A death in the family has ground this project all the way down to a halt, and it could be weeks, perhaps some months, before work proceeds. It will take a long time, but when the audiobook does release, it will be presented professionally, the voice will read the work beautifully, it will come with sound effects and musical transitions, all of which besides the voice clone will be independent from AI.

Do I think that audiobooks are becoming more appealing? Yes, even though we live in an age where a lot of our basic needs are taken care of, people are busier than ever, and attention spans are dwindling due to the onslaught of social media. Everyone I have spoken with recently openly admits that they’re not reading as much as they’re used to and are turning to audiobooks instead. Reading will never cease, there will always be readers, but it would be naive of me to say that audiobooks aren’t having a huge impact on the industry as a whole.

JBC: Can you tell us about your upcoming projects? What awaits readers of The Ancestral Odyssey? And are you working on a new book outside the series?

DG: The Ancestral Odyssey will have five episodes in total under this name. The first episode is The Utopian Dream – Volumes 1, 2 and 3. The sequel, Rise of the Black Doves – Volumes 4, 5 and 6 - was completed last year, while work on episode three, Seeds of War – Volumes 7, 8 and 9 - is underway. I am thoroughly enjoying the story thus far, it certainly has an interesting opening and what will be a fantastic ending. I’m unsure about the middle due to all of the moving parts, but I assure you, there will be some surprises in this next instalment. The lead villain is dark and dangerous; someone you’d least expect to challenge this selection of characters. You’ll get an expansion on some of the technology, the magic, the Celestial’s will make their most dramatic appearance yet, and we’ll just get to continue with all these different stories left over from Rise, stories that I hope will capture the reader's imagination. Progress is sadly slow due to the demand of my day job and other projects, such as editing shorter stories, writing articles for the blog, a horror book I have in the making that needs attention, and the preparation of the re-release of The Utopian Dream, it all takes its toll. Episode four, Rainbow Dawn, and the final episode in the series called The Chosen Kindred will be undertaken when the time comes, but that will not be for some time yet.

While slaving away on The Utopian Dream's audiobook, I decided that a clean-up of the material was necessary, so in the coming months we will see it removed and swiftly re-published. The story will remain the exact same, nothing will be changed on that front, but its structure, its grammatical errors will be ironed out where needs be on all current formats, from Kindle, Paperback, and Hardback. The same will follow with Rise of the Black Doves, because after my enormous review/analysis of this monster of a book, a review titled "A Thought on Rise," an essay stretching to 100 pages long published on my blog on the 23rd of August, I did pick out a few mistakes that need adjusting, but it is less of a priority at the moment.

I am in the throes of writing my own speculative fiction, a story that’s separate from TAO called Viewer One, and it will wade into the murky waters of H. P. Lovecraft and lonely psychological horror. We’ll see how that turns out as it’s something of a side project right now. If you’d like to know where to find me, my website is the best place to start. From there you have access to articles, artwork, videos and a list of my books. 

Thank you for your questions, I hope my answers satisfied, it’s been a pleasure.

About the interviewer
Joyce Bou Charaa is a Lebanese writer and editor. Her works are featured in Aniko Press, Tint Journal, The Indiependent, Newpages, Wijdan platform, and other outlets. She covers culture, books, and literature. Her recent work is featured in Shadows of The Mind anthology. You can find her on Instagram: Joyboucharaa/ and on X: @joyceboucharaa.

Review by Julie Gardner of "Football, Fighter Jets, Flowers & Everything in Between" by Ellistown Primary School's Year Six Students

 

As the title suggests, there is variety here. Thirty-two year-six pupils from Ellistown Primary School share their knowledge and interests. And what a knowledgeable and interesting group of individuals they seem to be! 

One piece is inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, another by the award-winning short film Little Freak, by Edwin Schaap. We read a fictionalised account of Catherine of Aragon overhearing Anne Boleyn and Henry Vlll. A labelled diagram explains why the Eurofighter Typhoon is so unique, and an illustrated description of Japan Football Trials makes for a fascinating read. A Victoria sponge recipe is a lovely tribute to a nan who baked "so many different things." 

Recurring themes across the collection are ambitions for the future, the importance of friendship and hobbies. There are some spooky stories, eight poems and some impressive illustrations, including a fierce looking Aslan, a dolphin and an abstract interpretation of the school’s houses. A Lego enthusiast contributes a photograph of a model which was made with 2352 pieces and a photograph of a clay and paint model of an ice-cream cone was inspired "by hot summer days, when the SATs are over and we’re having fun." 

Credit goes to the teachers who have encouraged this creative and diverse project, to Constantine who edited the collection, and to the Coalville C.A.N. Community for making the publication possible. I suspect the children will remember this work long after their SATs results are forgotten. As the headteacher writes in the foreword, the children have been given "permission to embrace their own individuality and to find a voice they may not have known they had." 

About the reviewer
Julie Gardner is studying towards a PhD at Nottingham Trent University, focussing on Silence and Voice in the poetry of Vicki Feaver and her contemporaries. Her poetry pamphlet Remembering was published by Five Leaves Publishers in 2024.

Review by Claire Cox of "Black Skies Die Starless" by Jamie Woods

Don’t be fooled by the  slightness of this pamphlet. It’s Tardis-like, DeLorean-like; it breaches time and space, sight and sound, elegy and epiphany. Step into it and you’re like likely to think you’ve been plunged into the lightless, nihilistic abyss of a dead-end youth in a dead-end town in the 1990s. And indeed you have, but such is the power of Jamie Woods’s creative and poetic energy that he crams in so much more. 

His poems, interestingly varied in form and tone, coalesce to tell the story of one person’s desperate search for drug-facilitated oblivion on one hand and love’s home-coming and validation on the other. This living paradox, openly explored by Woods in an autobiographical frame, is punchy in its rawness and honesty. The lows are emotionally crushing, as in "You and No-one Else" and "Pavement Kenickie Bedsit 99," so too, are the numerous failed pharmaceutical highs where the yearned-for acme of revelation or ascension (the poems ring with religious, Christian imagery) is never achieved. However, for me, the pamphlet’s beating heart lies in "The Opposite of Spring," a beautifully rendered moment of loss which, within the ordering of the pamphlet, might intuit a hesitant uptick in life trajectory. 

What makes this pamphlet eminently absorbing, and more than usually engaging, is its almost synaesthetic appeal to the senses. Woods, a musician and lyric writer, has included a song title for each poem, accessible via his website, and also visuals: graphically-designed poems are interspersed to strong effect, and several poems have ekphrastic origins. These intriguing, extended dynamics offer a dense web of intersensory connections within and beyond the pamphlet’s pages. Immerse yourself in the enriching and persuasive hinterlands Woods so generously offers. Rewind time. I would never have known Hole’s mind-blowing "Northern Star" without him.  

About the reviewer
Claire Cox was co-founder and Associate Editor of ignitionpress, winner of the 2021 Michael Marks Publishers’ Award. She has a PhD (Royal Holloway) on poetry and disaster. Her poems have appeared in Primers: Volume Five and other magazines and anthologies. Claire was also the winner of the 2020 Wigtown Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize. 

Review by Gary Day of "Sojourn: Moments in Poetry" by Christine Hammond

There’s much to admire, like and treasure in Christine Hammond’s debut collection: the mystery of "Snowdrops 1963," the beauty and grief of "White Rose" and the exquisite delicacy of the haiku sequence "Little Rose Garden." For those who crave something more visceral there’s "Menopause," where tampons have the same dark tendencies as the murderers in Macbeth: "your bloody employ / to stab the childless." Then there’s "Rape," a work of such intense fury that it brands itself indelibly on the mind.

In contrast are poems of piercing tenderness. "Sandeel Bay" is a memory of a lovers' outing. The pair pick berries and watch "grey seals turn at the rocks." It is "a perfect day," and the last two lines sweep in like a wave, lifting this reader, at least, to a new level of awareness. "Perpetual Motion" is a fine expression of one of the themes of the collection: how to keep the best of the past alive in the present. It is arguably Wordsworth’s chief concern in "Intimations of Immortality" from which Hammond quotes the expression "trailing clouds of glory." In "The Twisted Key" the lines "couldn’t anybody tell her? / Did nobody know" seem to echo the Beatles' "Didn't anybody tell her? Didn't anybody see?" from "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window."

"Ritual" is another exploration, or rather evocation, of the relationship between past and present. It describes the poet's mother lighting a fire in the "immaculate hearth." The line "the glow of broadsheet rosettes / cast a news flash for the era" is only one example of Hammond's gift for fusing the personal, the poetic and the political. I hope this collection is widely read to give Hammond the audience she deserves.

About the reviewer
Gary Day is a retired English lecturer and author of several books including Literary Criticism: A New History and The Story of Drama: Tragedy Comedy and Sacrifice. He is also co-editor of The Wiley Encyclopedia of British Literature 1660-1789. His poetry has been highly commended in a number of competitions, most recently in the Write Out Loud Echoes competition. His work has appeared in The High Window, The Seventh Quarry, The Dawn Treader as well as various other magazines.