Review by Sally Shaw of "Under a Pink Sky" by Esther Ghey

Under A Pink Sky is a memoir written by Esther Ghey, that takes the reader into the darkest depths of growing up and an unimaginable death of a child. Ghey guides the reader back into the sunlight and a place of hope through action. 

The title puts Brianna at the heart of the book. Ghey recounts a  moment after the death of her daughter when the sky was a vibrant pink. "'Look!' I exclaim, pointing up. The sky is covered in a thick, undulating pink duvet. It is heartbreakingly beautiful. The slow-flowing canal looks like a strip of pink. Alisha, Wes and I hold each other a little closer. 'She’s here,' I say. 'I can feel her.' How did I know it was her? I really don’t like the colour pink - I used to try my best to get her to wear anything other than pink - but pink was not just a colour to her, it was a way of life. So of course, as with anything to do with my extremely determined child, she would  paint the sky pink, and not just any pink, a French Fancy pink, just to remind me who was still queen." 

As Ghey tells the story of her own teenage years, the effects of her mum becoming a foster parent and the relationship with her mum as a small child, then as a teenager, I found that Ghey was searching for an understanding of what has changed from her childhood to Brianna’s childhood. What makes this so difficult is that Ghey couldn’t find that understanding while Brianna was struggling with growing up and finding her place in the world. Ghey speaks honestly and frankly about her behaviour from the age of eleven, the role education played and the influence of older children. Ghey discovered that playing the cheeky-clown no longer made her peers like her once she moved into high school. "If the cheeky-clown act wasn’t going to work, I would mimic what I had seen at home. I knew how the tough kids talked and I knew the reaction it got. I would not be pushed and shoved in the hallways, so I started to act up. I talked back to teachers to disguise the fact that I couldn’t cope. I would do anything to hide my insecurity, but it really was all an act." As Ghey describes Brianna’s difficulties in school, she questions herself as to why she was unable to identify the similarities of how education impacted her and then her daughter twenty-five years later. 

As the story of Brianna’s life and death unfolds, Ghey tells it from her viewpoint, never assuming she can give Brianna’s opinion. I found her honesty about the mother and daughter relationship touched my heart and helped me understand the complex reality that teenagers find themselves in today. What became clear was the influences the smart phone brought into Brianna’s life and that these were impacting how Brianna saw herself and society. "At school she was relatively safe, but the real bullies were in her pocket. They would follow her into her room and into her head." These bullies take on many forms, but the one thing they all have in common is they lurk within social media. Ghey informs the reader of the dangers of social media, how these platforms are managed to ensure children become addicted. 

Along with the addictive power of social media, the content manipulates teenagers to think and act in ways that are harmful. The way this is achieved and the influences on Brianna and others are beyond the scope of this review. "When she emerged, it was TikTok Brianna, wearing her school skirt provocatively short, lots of make-up and a persona that was being built on social media but with which she strutted into school." This made me question what would Brianna be like without this influence; would she feel the same with different role models from peers, society and history? 

As Brianna moves further into her teenage years she constantly uses her phone, making self-care videos on TikTok, gaining many followers while retreating into her bedroom, led away from her family and friends by social media algorithms. At school the phone dominates her behaviour and her ability to take part in education. Ghey documents their journey through trying to gain support and answers. When Brianna texts her mum that she’s on a bus to meet a friend, Ghey describes why this appeared to be a positive step, unaware this would be the last text.

Through this book I have gained insight into today’s childhood or rather how that childhood is dissolving into the digital world, where your worth is measured by likes, followers and social media challenges. If a child doesn’t have a phone they’re a nobody, yet if they have a phone they’re in danger. Education becomes invisible and the breadcrumbs back to childhood have been devoured by influencers. The message that Ghey gives is we, as parents, siblings, family, friends and society, have to maintain hope through action and love. Ghey, through her organisation The Brianna Ghey Legacy Project, is campaigning for a phone-free education, as well as working alongside side other organisations campaigning to reduce the risks of social media. Under A Pink Sky is relevant to everyone and has educated me about the possible dangers held within my phone. 

 

About the reviewer
Sally has an MA Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She gains inspiration from old photographs, history, childhood memories, and is inspired by writers Sandra Cisneros, Deborah Morgan, Liz Berry and Emily Dickinson. She has short stories and poetry published in various online publications including the Ink Pantry, AnotherNorth, Roi Faineant Press. 
Sally lives in the countryside. 

Review by Julie Gardner of "Creative Writing and the Critical Commentary: Reflection, Influence, Process," ed. Karen Stevens and Jonathan Taylor

Anyone studying Creative Writing at undergraduate or post-graduate level is almost certainly required to write a critical commentary to accompany each piece of creative work they submit. The first time I was asked to provide one, whilst studying for an MA, I wrote a lot about the work of writers who had influenced me but hardly anything about my own output so I was (quite rightly) criticised. If I had read Creative Writing and the Critical Commentary first, I think I would have done better. There were no published anthologies of critical commentaries then, but editors Karen Stevens and Jonathan Taylor have produced a book that, in their words, "aims to address that strange pedagogical gap." This book will, I am sure, soon be on the reading list for most Creative Writing courses in the UK and beyond. 

Stevens and Taylor suggest that the world of Creative Writing is a mirror-world: "You learn to write – or learn to write better – by reflecting on your own work and the work of others. The mirror-world reflects both yourself and your (literary) surroundings, and you learn by studying those reflections, by staring into the mirror." I like this image of a writer staring obsessively into a mirror, rather like Snow White’s stepmother. I’m not suggesting writers are evil or vain, but we can be insecure and we need to be willing to look at ourselves (or at least our work) carefully, paying close attention to small details.

Part One, which consists of the first three chapters, jointly written by the editors, acts as a thought-provoking and useful introduction to the main part of the book. For those in the early stages of their writing career, particularly if they are following a formal course at university or college, there are useful lists of what might be included in a critical commentary, with questions to consider. 

Part Two provides the twelve sample critical commentaries and it is this section that gives legitimacy to the editors' claim that "there seem to be no other books like this one." The contributing writers "have experience as both published authors and educators in higher education," and "encompass, in both spheres, all the major forms of writing (prose fiction, creative non-fiction, script writing, poetry and new media)." Each chapter ends with "Works Cited," an extensive and eclectic list for further reading.

I wondered if it would be frustrating to read the commentary without first having access to the creative work, and there were times when it was. Ideally, I would have liked to have read Stevens’ short story "Among the Crows" before I read her discussion around it, but, like all the contributors, she provides quotes from the original work and information about the content. As I worked my way through the chapters (Stevens’ commentary was the first) I decided that these essays worked perfectly well as discrete pieces. I found that I was applying what I was reading to, and finding inspiration for, my own practice. As a poet I was especially interested in Shaindel Beers’ essay, "Nature and Chance as Poetic Influence" and Lily Matsumoto’s "Experimental Poetic Autography: Writing the Languaged Self," but every chapter offered useful insights. I particularly enjoyed David Swann’s "commentary-in flash" about his novella-in flash, Season of Bright Sorrow. Kit de Waal also writes about flash fiction, comparing it to parables from the Bible: "both forms invite readers to engage deeply with the subtext, relying on suggestion and resonance rather than explicit explanation."  Dan Powell’s contribution, entitled "The End Is Never Where You Think," introduced me to Preclosure Theory. His chapter included the final two paragraphs of his short story, "Not the Fall," and I am eager to read it in its entirety and interested to see how that reading is affected by my prior reading of the commentary.

Anyone who believes that there is a formula for writing a critical commentary will, on reading this book, find that they are mistaken. The twelve essays are all very different in style and tone. What they do have in common is the writers' willingness to share openly about their own work and there is something generous about this. These are, in effect, masterclasses. Without doubt the book will be extremely useful to those tasked with writing critical commentaries, but it has much to offer all writers and indeed to many readers.

Stevens and Taylor make a bold claim for the critical commentary: "If approached with the same thoughtfulness as the creative work, they are not only profoundly helpful to an author, they might also stand as works of art in themselves." This book provides the evidence to support that claim. 

About the reviewer
Julie Gardner is working towards a Critical and Creative PhD at Nottingham Trent University. Her poetry pamphlet, Remembering, was published by Five Leaves in 2024.

You can read more about Creative Writing and the Critical Commentary on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Christine Hammond of "Small Birds Singing" by Matthew Welton

Small Birds Singing gently canters across a city’s green spaces covering a twelve-month seasonal period from September to August. Observing and recording the everyday acts of life, stanzas comprise two lines typeset asymmetrically. 

Effectively, this brings structure and order to the sheer volume and apparent randomness of the content. Often, it is used to juxtapose what may seem mundane with a reflection that encourages the reader to a deeper level of understanding of our reliance on and interaction with the objects around us: Thinginess and Thinkiness as Welton describes it, as seen here in "October":

a woman in the doorway, holding her palm out into the rain
in each window of the apartment block, a tall yellow flower

           on my desk, the stalks of apples I ate yesterday
                in a curving brick wall, a curved wooden door

is it thought we return to 

or that the thought returns to us? 

           

           a curving line of mushrooms in the grass
                 pigeons on a flat felt roof

almost as we’re watching, the bunch of tomatoes becoming plumper
the heap of shabby mattresses behind the hotel

            the more sporadically we follow the path a thought takes,
                  the deeper the thinkiness we drag ourselves into 

Journeying through the seasons allows the poems to draw heavily on nature for context and placement of both the everyday acts and surrounding items that are the backbone of the collection. It is here that the gentle canter has potential to move into more of gallop inviting the bigger questions, as noted in March:

the shadow of a breeze blowing through the shadows of the branches
our faces fizzling from the frozen rain

                            two small crows on the rusty railings
                            a heap of compost twice my height

the unending mumble in the things of the world
resembles the mumble of the unending wind
                  
                            a magpie taking a twig from one tree
                            to add to a nest in another

among the worn-out daffodils the pale new primroses 
the table lamp topples

things muster themselves
to meet our attention

Small Birds Singing is an innovative, book-length poem full to the brim with everyday observations, occurrences, items and natural rhythms that make up the fabric of our human experience. The appeal is wide, particularly for artists, poets and readers who love to walk, record and reflect. 

About the reviewer
Christine Hammond began writing poetry while studying English Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. Her early poems were published in The Gown (QUB), The Female Line (NIWRM) and feminist publication Women’s News, where as one of the original members, she also wrote Arts Reviews and had work published in Spare Rib. She returned to writing again after a long absence and her poetry has been featured in a wide variety of anthologies including The Poet’s Place and Moment (Poetry in Motion – The Community Arts Partnership), The Sea (Rebel Poetry, Ireland), all five editions of Washing Windows – Irish Women Write Poetry, Her Other Language (Arlen House) and literary journal The Honest Ulsterman. She has also been a reader at Poetry NI’s Purely Poetry open mics in Belfast. Her collection Sojourn – Moments in Poetry is now available on Amazon in both Paperback and Kindle format. 

Review by Paul Taylor-McCartney of "The Walkative Revolution" by Alec Finlay and "Two Women in a Car Park" by Selima Hill and Moby Hill

  

Cornwall-based Guillemot Press specialises in carefully designed, often collaborative poetry editions. Alec Finlay’s The Walkative Revolution (2025) is an illustrated hardback combining poetry, visual composition and manifesto-like writing. Selima Hill’s Two Women in a Car Park (2026), with artwork by her son, Moby Hill, takes the form of a compact landscape volume. 

Finlay is a Scottish poet and artist whose work explores landscape, ecology, naming and access. When chronic illness constrained the poet’s ability to move through the world, he reconsidered what it is to walk, be a walker, or a "not-walker," and creatively adapt to limits. Hill is known for psychologically charged poetic sequences in which tenderness, menace and surreal transformation exist side by side. Although very different in form and tone, these collections share an interest in movement, stillness and thresholds: between participation and exclusion, intimacy and privacy, forward motion and rest.

The Walkative Revolution challenges a tradition in which walking is closely associated with freedom, independence and authority. Finlay’s statement that "a path must be walked / or it will cease to exist" presents movement not as conquest but as an act of maintenance. In essence, a path survives through repeated use, where walking becomes a relationship between bodies, landscapes and the communities that keep routes open. This idea is developed through the proxy walk, whose participants are described as "the walker, the recipient, the artist": a small cast list and a choreography of roles. One person follows the route, another receives the walk – as though by post, pulse or proxy – and a third turns the experience into artistic form, translating footfall into form and step into script. The encounter with landscape no longer belongs only to the body that physically covers the ground. Elsewhere, Finlay declares that "There can never be an excess of access." The line gives the collection’s politics a memorable directness. Access is not treated as an optional kindness or an adjustment to be added afterwards - a principle that changes the meaning of participation itself. The poet’s thresholds are therefore both physical and social: they include paths and boundaries, but also the assumptions that determine who can use them and whose experience of place is valued. I found the cumulative effect of motif, theme and manifesto – both lyrically and politically – reminiscent of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

In comparison, Hill brings movement and stillness into the more intimate territory of family, care and emotional knowledge. In "Happiness," a mother "wheels her large son in his wheelchair beside the stony / river, round the lake." She believes she is going "in search of their / happiness," but the poem quietly revises that expectation: "this, however, is their happiness." The journey around the lake has no triumphant destination; its meaning lies in the shared circuit itself. Happiness is not waiting at the end of the route or dependent upon some future change. It is already present in the act of accompaniment: in the movement beside the river and around the lake. In "The Body in the Bungalow," stillness takes on a more troubling quality. A man has been lying alone, "probably in pain." When a woman asks whether the pain might "not have been that bad," the doctor replies: "All pain is pain." The answer is simple but uncompromising. It marks a threshold in understanding: another person’s suffering cannot be reliably measured from the outside, nor dismissed as it is not fully visible. The final poem, "Unhappiness," also considers the limits of what one person can know about another. The speaker reflects that "All adult men have had their hearts broken" and therefore "he, too" must have experienced heartbreak, although "we don’t know how or when." The phrasing insists upon the son’s adult emotional life, while "we don’t know" protects his privacy. Hill implies that closeness and care do not give complete access to another person’s inner world.

The collections differ in their thresholds: Finlay’s are spatial and social, shaping who can participate, while Hill’s are psychological, marking the limits of knowing another person. Both resist the idea that freedom means constant forward movement. Finlay presents stillness as active and connected; Hill shows movement as circular and unresolved. In each, thresholds become places where agency, knowledge and relationships are rethought. What distinguishes these books is also the strength of their voices. Finlay’s inventive, concept-driven work reimagines access and place, whilst Hill’s compressed lyricism captures care, pain and intimacy without simplifying them. 

The books are also compelling as physical objects. Their visual and tactile qualities are not incidental but shape the pace and meaning of the reading experience. Finlay’s playful movement between poetry, manifesto and visual composition asks the reader to pause, adjust and approach the page in different ways. Hill’s compact landscape format, accompanied by some strikingly simple but haunting artwork, suits a collection concerned with circuits, boundaries and uncertain passages. Taken together, The Walkative Revolution and Two Women in a Car Park are two highly original contributions to contemporary poetry. They are the work of distinctive and compelling voices, but also beautifully conceived and produced books that reward close attention. 

About the reviewer
Dr Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, researcher and lecturer. His interests include dystopian literature, queer studies, children’s fiction and initial teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and academic articles have appeared in a wide range of print and electronic media, and fiction titles he recently worked on as commissioning editor have won regional readers’ and publishers’ awards. His debut novel, Sisters of the Pentacle, was published by Hermitage Press in 2022, and his first non-fiction title, Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall’s Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity was published by The History Press (June 2026), to great acclaim.