Review by Paul Taylor-McCartney of "The Language of Now" by Anne Caldwell

Anne Caldwell’s The Language of Now is a collection of prose poems that moves quietly but insistently through memory, landscape and the fragile textures of everyday life. Rooted in a northern sense of place, the book also engages with illness, ecological unease and the emotional afterlife of recent years.

Caldwell has become one of the most assured contemporary practitioners of the prose poem, and this form suits her especially well. These pieces are compact but spacious, lyrical without becoming vague. They unfold in paragraphs that seem at first conversational, then deepen into something more meditative. Her work returns repeatedly to bogs, backstreets, moorland, weather and overlooked urban edges, yet these are never simply settings. They are charged spaces where memory, vulnerability and the more-than-human world meet.

Caldwell’s restraint is one of the collection’s greatest strengths. She lets emotion gather around an image until it becomes quietly affecting. In "Wasp’s Nest," the speaker listens for "the ragged edges of our lives," a phrase that captures much of the collection’s mood: vulnerability, endurance and the sense that contemporary life often feels slightly frayed. In "Widdop Gate, High Summer," the moorland is described as "egg-shell delicate," and later as "a map of the whole world in miniature." These small phrases open outward with surprising force.

Some of the most moving poems connect strongly with questions of class, culture and language. "Boundary Lane, 1974" in particular stirs that recognition. Its backward glance towards a childhood street, and towards the social world carried in place and speech, suggests how deeply early surroundings shape us. Caldwell’s attention to ordinary language and remembered environments prompts a nostalgic return to childhood: to voices, habits and local textures that once seemed fixed. What these poems understand so well is that growing into the present often means letting go of much that was once familiar in order to make way for the new. 

The title poem suggests another dimension of the collection’s thinking. Caldwell writes that the language of the present moment "now drifts away like a driftwood smile … or a Spring moon waxing and waning." These images capture the book’s underlying concern with impermanence: the sense that language, memory and even identity shift continually with time.

Elsewhere the emotional register deepens into something more intimate. In "Lost Daughter," the line "I wrote a letter: Dearest Daughter, how I longed for you. To hold your butter-coloured toes in my hands" carries a tenderness that is both personal and universal. The image is simple, yet it holds an entire emotional landscape within it. 

What emerges from The Language of Now is a poetics of attention. These prose poems do not seek dramatic revelation. Instead they offer something quieter and more enduring: a way of seeing the ordinary world with renewed sensitivity. In a literary culture that often rewards urgency and noise, Caldwell’s work reminds us of the value of patience, listening and careful noticing. This is a subtle, moving collection that stays with the reader long after the final page, and invites return, offering a brief but beautifully crafted space for quiet reflection.

About the reviewer
Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, post-doctoral researcher and lecturer. His interests include speculative fiction, queer studies, children’s fiction and initial teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and academic articles have appeared in print and electronic form. He recently published his debut children’s novel, Sisters of the Pentacle (2022), and his work as commissioning editor resulted in two titles winning prestigious regional awards. His first non-fiction title, Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall’s Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity, is due to be published by The History Press (June 2026).

You can read more about The Language of Now by Anne Caldwell on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Rob Jones of "Take A Hint, Dani Brown" by Talia Hibbert

One of the reasons I enjoyed Take a Hint, Dani Brown so much was undoubtedly nostalgia for my student days. I attended seminars led by people as sharp and uncompromising as Danika, in campus buildings as forbidding and draughty as Echo, guarded by security staff as gruff yet good-humoured as Zafir.

Of course, this only goes to show that one of the real strengths of Talia Hibbert’s writing is her characters, who manage to be vivid, distinct and yet familiar. Their backgrounds are handled sensitively and genuinely, and their personalities and mannerisms are cemented in a few short pages, the third-person personal narration providing an insight into their thoughts and the way they see things.

This narration is conversational, self-aware and liberally sprinkled with humour, but the funniest parts of the book are in the dialogue between characters. Dani and Zaf are clearly well acquainted with, and fond of each other from the start, and although nothing has previously happened between them their witty exchanges are up there with those between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (other Shakespearean romantic protagonists are available).

Hibbert shows admirable creativity in how Dani and Zaf are brought together and how things develop between them. Each is hugely driven, Danika by the search for professional fulfilment in a competitive field and Zafir by his heart for the rugby-based non-profit he has set up. The pair’s sudden social-media stardom, driven by an apparent romantic relationship between them (which doesn’t actually exist for most of the book!) leads to a huge increase in publicity, donations and interest for the latter, with which Danika is happy to assist despite the stress she faces in the run-up to a key symposium.

Zafir’s fondness for romance novels provides a pleasing metatextuality as well as further opportunities for comedy, and this book shines as a romance as much as any other genre in which one might class it. It is tender, gripping, sometimes steamy and always the right side of believable. It is worth reading however familiar you are with literary academia, rugby, witchcraft, mental health, social media or romantic relationships.

About the reviewer
Rob Jones studied English with Creative Writing options at the University of Leicester and completed an MA in Victorian Studies there. He lives in Sileby with his wife, sings with Leicester University Chamber Choir and dreams of working in heritage.

You can also read an article about Talia Hibbert's Take A Hint, Dani Brown, on the Creative Writing at Leicester blog here. 

Review by Beth Gaylard of "Collegiate" by Natalie Beech, Brigitte Adela and Written Foundations Theatre Company

Collegiate is a production by Written Foundations Theatre Company, a partnership of director Brigitte Adela with playwright Natalie Beech.  Original music (by Selim Ben Rabha and Matthew Daly) and lighting were elegantly worked out to complement the drama, without distracting from it. I saw it in the Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester.

Set on a campus in freshers’ week, Collegiate is a story about friendship and pseudo-friendship, as well as sexual politics. At the heart of the play is a rape, which is not accepted as such by any of the characters, not even at times, by Tash (played by Rebecca Tubridy) to whom it happens. The brutality of the assault (not portrayed graphically) is matched by the nastiness of Tash’s and Kev’s friends. Tash’s friends scrutinise her behaviour and withdraw their affection in the aftermath of the assault - while Kev (played by Stephen Love) is the butt of more savvy young men, whose laddism contributes to the events. It’s the laddism that is really under scrutiny here – the play effectively challenges assumptions about sexual consent.
  
The portrayal of Tash’s situation (and its consequences) avoids the ‘victim’ stereotypes associated with those who’ve suffered a sexual assault, focussing on the personal horror – the uniqueness of the experience and the isolation it brings in its wake, as onlookers decide for themselves who’s at fault. 

All this is conveyed through a fast-moving script and excellent acting. There is humour in the piece, but like the music, it complements the story and never detracts from the serious subject – and both actors convincingly portrayed the dilemmas of Tash and Kev.

This is a piece of work that deserves a wider audience – particularly of the young people it’s aimed at, so I was pleased to hear from Written Foundations hope to stage Collegiate at the Edinburgh Festival in August. Catch it if you can. And incidentally, if you happen to have any links with sixteen plus education, it would be well worth booking a performance workshop for your students, as they think about heading off for university themselves.                                     

About the reviewer
Beth Gaylard is a teacher, writer and MA  student at the University of Leicester. She lives in Leicestershire in a weird modernist house that will one day feature in a bestselling novel or film, hopefully her own.