Poetry review – IMPORTENTS: Rennie Halstead feels the force of Naomi Foyle’s response to the ills of contemporary society
society
The Great Melt By Alister Doyle Published by Flint Books My only churlish quibble with Alister Doyle’s highly readable distillation of years of meticulous research into climate change and sea level rise is that it might make the reader desperate for the kind of far-flung adventures we can no longer undertake lightly.
Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial. By Peter Stott. Review by Barbara Lewis.
A year before the Kyoto Protocol committed the developed world to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, Britain’s Education Act of 1996 incorporated the Thatcher government’s 1986 Education Act that was designed to deal with a perceived issue of left-wing teachers indoctrinating school pupils. Two decades on, mathematician Peter Stott found himself defending climate science against its deniers, who used Thatcher’s legal legacy to take to the High Court their objections to Al Gore’s climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth being streamed in schools.
P – Michael Bartholomew-Biggs reviews a classic dystopia by D Rudd-Mitchell in which the individual is faced with a seemingly all-powerful Party
Poetry review – BY DEGREES: Carole Bromley is confident that David Tait’s pandemic poems will stand the test of time
Poetry review – WHATSNAME STREET: Rennie Halstead explores last-century Lambeth as portrayed in Anna Robinson’s authentic and entertaining collection
In their humble domestic lives, my grandmothers were not romantic and did not fight for civil or women’s rights. They did not personify any ideal of femininity or heroic endeavour. They simply carried on with their ordinary lives caring for their families and working hard.
Poetry review – RENTED: Pat Edwards engages with a challenging collection by Sue Johns
Poetry review – THE LAST DINOSAUR IN DONCASTER: James Roderick Burns finds gritty lyricism in a promising first collection by Sarah Wimbush
Poetry review – AT RISK: Rennie Halstead admires the way that Diana Cant has made poetry from her insights gained as a child psychotherapist
Head First: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of Mind and Body by Alastair Santhouse.
Santhouse has found his destined niche in an NHS office, with mismatched furniture and absolutely no view, where he tries to fathom the very adult issues of desperate people on the edge of our society, many of whom have flummoxed every other medical department.
Poetry review – THE KIDS: Carla Scarano is moved by Hannah Lowe’s poems about teaching young people
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, society, year 2022 • Tags: books, Carla Scarano, poetry