Review by Tionee Joseph of Two Events at Literary Leicester 2021

Literary Leicester took place from 17th March to the 19th March 2021 and was hosted online by Dr Harry Whitehead at the University of Leicester.

Marlon James in conversation with Dr Michael Bucknor streamed simultaneously from Leicester, New York and Jamaica. The author was the first Jamaican to win the Man Booker prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings. He stated the importance of reading in his childhood and how it can make one a better writer. He also reflected on how the lockdown has affected his writing practice, saying that he used it as an escape from reality.

When asked about the relevance of the literary canon, he said that it is important that it is actively and continually interrogated. In the genre of magical realism in which he writes, James says that there is room to explore queer perspectives. 

Jeffrey Boakye in conversation with Dr Emma Parker

The University of Leicester graduate, author and teacher Jeffrey Boakye spoke about race in Britain within the context of grime music. He said that for young, marginalised people, grime music is a way to experience joy, creativity and their heritage. He also emphasized the role of the media in perpetuating negative stereotypes about black people and how this is a narrative spawned from colonialism. Boakye said that for change to happen, we need to challenge oppressive ideologies and he encourages young people to prepare to have these conversations. 

The talks that I attended were very thought-provoking and I learnt a lot about the craft of writing. The conversations were relevant to current issues and I thoroughly enjoyed watching both events. This was a brilliant programme of diverse figures and I hope for more of the same in future festivals.

About the reviewer
Tionee Joseph is completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. She has a blog where she writes about writing and gives lifestyle advice, which you can read here. Her poetry and articles on film, TV and adaptations have been published.

Review by Sue Mackrell of "#MeToo: Rallying Against Sexual Assault and Harassment: A Women's Poetry Anthology," ed. Deborah Alma

This powerful anthology of poems has gained new resonance and purpose with the murder of Sarah Everard and the police response to a vigil held in her memory. It is a witness to the courage and strength of women who are speaking out against violence and intimidation. It harks back to Maya Angelou’s ‘And Still I Rise’ and reaches forward to a new era when women’s voices are heard and respected. 

Particularly pertinent are the poems which explore the ways in which women’s lives are circumscribed by an implicit sense of threat: ‘you think / you are being followed / and you pick up speed’ (Meg Cox). Familiar routes are charted: 'There’s the “Cheer up Love it Might Never Happen” Spot,' 'Here’s the “Avoid At All Costs” / Underpass' and 'I still had to walk round / the block to make sure he didn’t know I lived here / on my ordinary street at the end of my ordinary walk home' (Emma Lee).

The anthology opens with the barely understood experiences of childhood, the ‘whispers of kids being “interfered with”’ (Angela Topping), the invitations to look for rabbits and lost dogs, and the ‘It’s just a game ... the girl who tolerates it the longest / is the winner’ (Sally Jenkinson). Frustration and anger are expressed at  everyday abusive language, the ‘cocksure roar of boy used to his own way, / one more of the ones we warn each other about, / whose reputations we pass around like classroom / secrets’  (Jane Commane).

For some ‘all my stories [are] small / but always wary,’ the 'ground floor flat / a face at the window / no phone / no back door' (Amy Rainbow). But the most harrowing poems are gut wrenching and visceral, ‘Unwrapped / like a parcel of offal / slippery, coming / unstuck’ (Linda Goulden). Disturbing images stay in the mind, a child waiting for ‘the lock that unclicks, the coffining dark, the / hooded stranger with Papa’s voice, the makeshift bed’ (Pascale Petit). There are unanswerable questions:  ‘What do you do when your child is born of rape?’ (Louisa Campbell).

But the sheer quality of the writing keeps the reader going. Anger invigorates the language. More reflective pieces are sensitive and nuanced, and flashes of dark humour lighten the tension. Many contributors are nationally and internationally published poets such as Pascale Petit, Helen Ivory, Helen Mort, Roz Goddard, Jacqueline Saphra, Kim Moore, Sabrina Mahfouz and Jane Commane. Others are just beginning to find their voices in writing.  This anthology represents a place of safety where women can speak out without fear. As Deborah Alma writes, it is a call to action from a ‘pride of lionesses who learned to roar stories that choked us.’ It is a rallying cry of anger and impatience. ‘We stand together, each one a Spartaca / no longer silent or alone: each voice stronger, / massing, alive, a wild murmuration / of me too / me too / me too’ (Pippa Little).  

About the reviewer
Sue Mackrell’s poetry has been published online and in print anthologies and journals, most recently in Agenda Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, and Bloody Amazing (Dragon Yaffle 2020). She has an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Loughborough University, where she was a part-time lecturer for several years. Now retired, she has taught and facilitated Creative Writing workshops in Higher and Further Education, schools, museums, art galleries, hospitals, and with ex offenders.

An earlier version of this review was published in Agenda Poetry Autumn 2019. 

Review by Rob Jones of "Light" by C. M. Taylor

I’m too young to be personally familiar with the heady, turn-of-the-millennium setting of Light, but it’s enjoyable enough to reminisce about things I can just remember – genuinely down-at-heel pubs, the Eurostar leaving from Waterloo – and trace the way things have changed and the recent origins of things which now seem assumed and enshrined.

The description of East and West London and the way they intersect in the art world is abstract but profoundly evocative, however rapidly East London is becoming unaffordable in our present. The sardonic criticism of the swish, fast-moving and unobtainable West and the way it “slums over” to the East in search of “authentic” art will resonate with and amuse anyone whose visits to the capital are fleeting, who engages with it as an interloper.

Humour is a strength of this novella, underpinning descriptions, interactions and events. Larger-than-life characters spill out of the glass towers into bistros, galleries, barns and fields, to be dismantled at a distance in the self-centred voice of the jaded narrator, Ben. Beyond humour, Taylor is a creative prose writer in the best sense, using a broad spectrum of detail, from sparse to decadent, to relate, reflect and characterise.

In the best traditions of the form, the story gains pace like a piano rolling down a hill. Disparate strands clunk into place in a finale which only once you have read it seems all too horrifyingly predictable.

I would argue that there are different ways to read Light. I certainly enjoyed it as a critical and meta-textual examination of art in different forms, including prose, an opinion which would doubtless earn me the derision of its narrator. It’s a funny old world.

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.

Review by Sue Mackrell of "Whose hand would you like to hold ..." by Patricia McCarthy

Patricia McCarthy’s poignantly titled chapbook, written during the first lockdown, invites us to ‘Draw the curtains, light the candle.’ It is ‘Time to sit as the Brontes did,’ she says, ‘Fight off the attacker’ and write. She tells us: ‘Emily will scribble – /with yours – her secrets, fast as she can.’ The predator stalking the Brontes was tuberculosis. For us, Covid 19 has forced us into introspection, to explore the ‘geography of the heart, ‘... deciphering more / about your selves than ever you knew.’ McCarthy asks us to ‘Reflect on those stolen moments / of grace; re-live them despite your skin-hunger,' to ‘think whose hand you would like / to hold one last time, then press softly to your lips.’ 

A thematic link in this cycle of poems is past epidemics, plagues, and pestilences, a seeking of causes and cures. The poet describes her own experience of polio, an evocative portrayal of a 1950s childhood watched from a sick bed, recalling images of ‘tiny faces peering, as if from Advent calendars, from communal iron lungs.’ 

The course of the lockdown in these poems is charted in the heavens; in March, Venus is ‘bright as a searchlight / over all our lives.’  In times past three ‘super-moons’ in as many months would be a sure sign of planetary maleficence; 'influenza' comes from medieval Latin, meaning ‘influence of the stars.’ Ancient Native American names for the moon are invoked, the ‘worm moon,’ when the earth is warm enough for worms to become active and begin the growth season, the ‘pink moon’ when wild ground phlox of that colour is in bloom. The poems are woven together with children’s rhymes, old country sayings, and ancient oracles. Natural phenomena are interpreted as auguries – flights of swallows, skeins of geese, oak branches offer portents of the future.

McCarthy writes of a close relationship with horses, observing how they can survive the brutality of humans, and understand death better than us. A deep connectedness to the natural world gives authenticity to the poems in this chapbook;  flowers blooming and fading mark the passing of spring into summer, from the primroses and daffodils of March, to June wedding roses ‘with no bride to wander under their perfumed roof,’  through to the first of the Michaelmas daisies. 

There is deep sympathy for those denied their solace, ‘Terrible to get the sun only by balancing / an arm or a leg on a window- ledge.’ McCarthy remembers those in care homes, ’The forgotten ones who have forgotten themselves: / see them stare out behind barred windows.’ She  writes with tenderness about her mother, 'suddenly I am you, / our bones knit together, wrapped / in all our ages in waiting rooms,'  an aunt ‘dialling random numbers like life lines,’ a sister ‘newly widowed’ in France. These are deeply personal poems but they resonate, ignite a shiver of recognition from experience or from stories heard on the radio or television, read in newspapers or on the internet. She writes, too, of domestic abuse, for which lockdown provided perfect conditions. ‘Many tales untold not for the telling / within four walls, no escape ...’ Cases of sibling abuse have escalated; the story of Cinderella is recalled: 'She never reported them, only too aware / they would have the last word ...' 

The end of lockdown is tentative, ‘See they return, one and by one they cross Westminster Bridge, not quite yet / undone by death ...’ and then ‘ the criss-cross of pollutant jet-trail tells / of a sky-spoilt world gone back on itself.’ But there is also a sense of comfort; in an earlier  poem McCarthy writes of the loss of childhood faith in Easter liturgies, of  ‘swapping naves for woodland paths,’ wondering instead if ‘his heart [is] beating in every tree ... his pulse in throats of nightingales.’ Here she writes it is ‘Best to rely on the anima mundi which has / no language, but is Love feathered with Peace.’ Its ‘Grace’ she writes ‘will not let those who died alone seem, / amongst Michaelmas daisies, to leave no trace. / All the farewells that could not be said, / are on the backs of swallows, ...Mine amongst them, for my father, spiral into a chorus of Creation psalms.’ 

In the final poem we are encouraged to ‘Draw back the curtains, snuff out the candle / and let Rilke’s angels clean misted windows / with their wings.’ But there is a warning – the angels ‘call out / Fear and Fear not. The look on their faces is terrible.’ 

Covid had not yet finished with us, still hasn’t finished with us. We are back again in March, still hunkering down, drawing strength from writing and from story-telling, as those who wrote the Decameron ‘reeled off tales / to avoid epidemics of fear in a plague.’ In the first lockdown McCarthy expressed what seemed then such a vain hope that a vaccine ‘simple as the one then found’ for polio, ‘dissolved / on a sugar cube,’ would be discovered. Miraculously, her wish has been fulfilled.  

About the reviewer

Sue Mackrell’s ‘Lockdown’ poem will shortly appear on the Words for the Wild poetry website. Her poetry has been published online and in print anthologies and journals, most recently in Agenda Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, and Bloody Amazing (Dragon Yaffle 2020). She has an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Loughborough University, where she was a part-time lecturer for several years. Now retired, she has taught and facilitated Creative Writing workshops in Higher and Further Education, schools, museums, art galleries, hospitals, and with ex offenders.

Review by Karol Nielsen of "The Very Small Mammoths of Wrangel Island" by Craig Finlay

Craig Finlay, in his debut poetry collection, The Very Small Mammoths of Wrangel Island, moves through Africa, the Middle East, and the American Midwest in his surreal poems that blend history, philosophy, and myth with personal narrative. He tells us about polar bears with poison livers, the evolution of miniature mammoths, Neanderthals who “created art,” fugitive slaves who were the first colonial settlers in North America, the development of chlorine gas as a weapon, and other bits of history threaded into poetry. The most moving poems are more personal. His narrator smokes and drinks to excess and struggles with sobriety. He tries to make amends: “l’m ready for you to tell me all the ways I hurt you. And by that I mean, I’m ready to sit and really listen. I won’t distract you with stories. Like how the color blue doesn’t appear anywhere in the Bible.”

About the reviewer
Karol Nielsen is the author of two memoirs and two poetry chapbooks. Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing in nonfiction. Her poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry.

Review by James Holden of "Les couleurs primaires" by Mélissa Verreault

Camille lives a colourful life. She works for a paint manufacturer, where it’s her job to invent names for the 2,000 unique shades they produce each year. And yet, for all this colour, Camille’s life is colourless. She says her brain is blank and her hours at work empty. It is to fill this emptiness that she sets out on a quest to discover whether or not someone has ever loved her but not had the courage to tell her. It’s a quest that takes her to old friends and haunts, and ultimately to a decision about her life.

This is the outline of Mélissa Verreault’s charming short novel Les couleurs primaires. It is published by Les Éditions Didier as part of their range aimed at French language learners, ‘Mondes en VF.’ The texts in this range are all pitched at a certain language level as defined by the CEFR. Verreault’s novel is defined as being A2 level, which means that it’s intended for learners at an ‘Elementary’ standard. I should say here, though, that this does not make the text suitable for beginners.

Language acquisition is a slow process. Professor Stephen Krashan’s has outlined in his theories just how important reading is to that process, and has emphasised the fundamental need for what he calls ‘compelling comprehensible input.’ The texts in the Mondes en VF range all work towards that aim – they are designed ‘pour le plaisir de lire en français.’ Verreault’s novel certainly provides compelling content for language learners. The inclusion of definitions in the footnotes make it an even more useful tool in the learning process (the definitions are themselves given in French). Additionally, and like all the texts in the range, Les couleurs primaires comes with a range of free supporting materials, including vocab sheets and exercises. Better still, it comes with a free audio version which can be downloaded from the publisher’s website.

As a language learning tool, this novel is great. The story drives the reader onwards. I was concerned enough with Camille’s quest not to feel put off by the extra effort of reading in my target language. Whilst the text is pitched at A2 standard there are definitely some trickier passages and structures. The reader will encounter the passé composé, the imparfait, the futur proche, the future simple and the conditionnel and will need to be able to differentiate between them. There are also a number of idioms. Verreault herself is from Quebec, so the reader should be aware that some of these idioms might not be heard in Paris – however, this is explained in the footnotes.

The text’s short length and its necessarily uncomplicated French means that its plot also lacks complication at times. The story is charming, and the reader feels for Camille during her quest. However, there were moments when I wanted to know more. For instance, the revelation that Camille’s school friend Karine had loved her when they were younger was passed over in a rather cursory fashion. So, too, was the revelation and then refutation of Camille’s unwitting role in a suicide.

Nevertheless, I was thoroughly charmed by this short novel, and was happy enough after finishing it to read it again immediately, this time with the audio book playing. I felt a great sense of motivation from having finished this text in my target language. I also felt motivated by Camille’s commitment at the end of her adventure to live colourfully. As she says: ‘J’ai envie de vivre en couleurs.’

About the reviewer

James Holden is an independent academic and writer. He is a Lisztian, a Proustian, and a proud nerd. The author of In Search of Vinteuil: Music, Literature and a Self Regained, his recent research has focused on the piano playing and aesthetics of the Romantics. He is currently working on improving his French. His website is here.

Review by Gus Gresham of "Drowning: A Memoir" by Andy Palmer

 

This is a well-crafted real-life tale that packs a punch with its no-nonsense language. It’s funny, sad, moving, and shocking in places. But what will draw in, disarm and beguile a reader most of all is the courage and honesty of the writing.

 

The book is subtitled A Memoir, but it definitely reads like a novel. With its unflinching scrutiny of human failings and the depths to which addiction can drag a person, it put the reviewer in mind of the extraordinary Melvin Burgess’s Junk.

As the central character of his own story, Andy is a flawed anti-hero who is desperate to be understood and loved, but who frequently hits the self-destruct button. Even during the experimentation of his adolescent years, the seeds of desperation are sprouting. In one passage, he is abusing his medicinal inhaler, taking snort after snort because it produces a kind of high. When the inhaler is exhausted, “I grabbed a can of deodorant, wrapped a towel around the top and sprayed it into my mouth breathing in the fumes. It worked …”

We feel his pain and shame as he rips off his grandad and raids the neighbours’ medicine cabinet. Anything to get a fix. And as he leaves school and gets paid work, he begins to consume truly frightening amounts of alcohol. The writing cleverly distorts the narrator’s motives: is he getting wasted for its own sake or doing it as a means of self-annihilation? “Nothing can beat oblivion. I wanted all my feelings to go. I wanted to be numb.” There was a scene in the Mike Figgis film Leaving Las Vegas (1995) in which Elisabeth Shue’s character says something like, “So you’re drinking as a way of killing yourself?” And Nicolas Cage’s character says something like, “Or killing myself is a way to drink.”

In Drowning, however, it’s not just booze. And amid the spare language, room is carved out for arresting imagery. There are fine passages describing tripping on acid or coming up on MDMA: “My stomach turned into a jellyfish and floated off.”

Andy Palmer’s prose is very real and immediate. And disturbing. You have to keep reading because your head is whirling with questions like, What’s going to happen? How can it possibly end?

A fantastic reminder, too, that indie publishing has some priceless gems to offer.

About the reviewer
Gus Gresham is an avid reader and writer. He has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing and has worked variously as a mechanical engineer, construction worker, fruit picker, community activist for Greenpeace, writer, English tutor, audio-book producer, interpersonal and communication skills facilitator, and building surveyor. He’s had short stories published in literary magazines Brittle Star and Under The Radar, and his recently published novel, EARTHRISE, is available on Amazon. You can read a review of it here. 

Review by Laurie Cusack of "Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness"

 

These outsider stories are full of characters that could live on the fringe and margins of any society. Vital stories! A cracking read for the Greek taverna and Cafe Neon that awaits us. They stimulate and generate insight. Manna from heaven. Bravo! Alexandros Plasatis’s superlative new collection of Greek-cum-Egyptian-related tales are packed with crafted sentences that are balanced, punchy, acerbic, staccato and engineered with quirky detail. 

One gets a buzz when something as good as this blows its way in from left field. In Plasatis’s pugnacious ‘The Legend of Zaramarouq,’ for instance, two local hard men lock horns in a Kavala taverna: blood, sawdust, cigarettes and beer fly in this epic brawl that resonates with mythical undertones: ‘Pavlo moved. He jumped up from his barstool and ran towards the giants. He didn’t know what  he would do once he got there, he just ran, and, when he got close enough, he took a leap and smashed a shoulder against Zaho’s body.’ 

Also, expletives detonate within Plasatis’s prose like an air bomb repeater fired into the hush of night. Such language helps build a rich vernacular tone that fuses the text with verve and believability, often surprising and shocking the reader at the same time: 'Knowing that the young waiter was watching him, he would catch Pavlo’s face and pull a face: “Un-fucking-believable” – then get on with the story.'

Harbour life is often brutal and seedy in Made by Sea and Wood, In Darkness, and Plasatis portrays this in a compelling matter-of-fact fashion. Plaudits. I was reminded of Charles Bukowski, Lucia Berlin and Denis Johnson’s narratives, as I carved through  Plasatis’s pared-back incendiary tales. Life can be scruffy, dark, funny and invariably, tough within their prose. Renowned texts of such ilk have a ‘terrible beauty’ about them – blue-collar-kitchen-sink-dirty- realist-in-your-face truths that knock you for six! In every rollicking story, Plasatis manages to capture these sensibilities. And by the end of this dark harbour stroll, you, too, will be gagging for retsina, ouzo and tsipouro. Down the hatch. Yamas! One for the road, then?

About the reviewer
Laurie Cusack has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. He is currently working on his first collection of short stories. His story 'The Bottle and the Trowel' is published in the anthology High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories. You can read more about his work here. 

You can read more about Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness, as well as an excerpt from it, on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Neil Fulwood of "The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster" by Sarah Wimbush

 

When a pamphlet wins a major competition adjudicated by such luminaries as Imtiaz Dharker and Ian McMillan - and when a number of the poems within that pamphlet have been placed in or won the Mslexia, Red Shed, Live Cannon International and Bread & Roses Poetry Competitions (and others: the acknowledgements page does some heavy lifting) - it’s a safe guess that the reader is in for some good poetry.

The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster isn’t just good; it’s as good as it gets. As a second salvo following the Seren pamphlet Bloodlines (2019), which explored the poet’s Traveller heritage, it doubles down on that work’s statement of intent, that establishes Wimbush as a major new talent, a distinctive voice, in British poetry. 

Broadly, The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster explores geography, class, recent history (key poems take the 1984-85 miners’ strike as a backdrop), heritage and landscapes, both internal and external. There is arguably more going on in its 35 pages than many a full-length collection achieves. I could easily write a couple of thousand words by way of review, studded with any number of eminently quotable excerpts, but for reasons of brevity, ‘The Lost’ serves as an exemplar of the pamphlet’s aesthetic. A social history linking people to jobs and places, it unspools through two pages, moving from nostalgia 

          Elsie’s grand-kiddies scrubbed up nice
          on Saturdays at Greyfriars Baths,
          changing them in poolside cubicles,
          all their worldly goods in one wire basket

to the starker realities of those times:

          the seven lads who never came back
          ...
          while the filthy rich lorded it in NCB’s Coal House
          and Plant

to the socio-economic changes that bring the poem up to date:

          ... the factories turned call centres,
          the schoolyards, the ginnels, the smokeless chimneys
          and beneath them, beneath all that, those lost men,
          and all that blackness still down there.

This is muscular poetry, wrought with precision and loaded with experience. Mordant humour runs through it. Wimbush has a keen eye for human foibles, and heart and talent big enough to transform them into art.

About the reviewer
Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, where he still lives and works. He is the author of two poetry collections with Shoestring Press, No Avoiding It and Can’t Take Me Anywhere, with a third forthcoming in June 2021.