Audio books are on the rise and social media are creating their own grammar for the youthful audiences I sense are the prime target for R J Askew’s In The Room with Three Doors, released on Amazon Audible in March.
Money and heroic self-sacrifice have been considered throughout history the rational motivations for risking life. In pandemic lockdown, we’re more aware of that than ever as governments weigh economic damage and national health, while workers battling on the frontline make the ultimate sacrifice.
WHEN WE LIVED IN HEAVEN: William Bedford considers Two Girls and a Beehive – a new collection of poetry by Rosie Jackson & Graham Burchell
Malcolm Carson reviews Remembered Acts, the most recent novel by John Lucas
Thomas Ovans reviews two recent poetry pamphlets by Stephen Claughton – The War with Hannibal and The 3-D Clock
Poetry Review – The Machineries of Joy: John Forth seeks to do justice to the sheer range of Peter Finch’s poetry
Virgin & Child: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is intrigued by a new novel by Maggie Hamand in which a theological conundrum leads to tension – and ultimately violence – within the Vatican
Psychoanalytic psychotherapist Juliet Rosenfeld published her meditation, as her publicist so aptly describes it, on her own journey from an intellectual understanding to a deep, personal grasp of Freud’s distinction between harrowing grief and the gentler sorrow of mourning in February – when today’s equivalent of Spanish flu had begun to throw wives, husbands, children, lovers across the globe into states of emotion they may never fully process.
Richard Caldwell surveys Andrew Keanie’s new study of Thomas De Quincey
For those suffering withdrawal symptoms, Stay at Home with Crazy Coqs is providing a thrice-weekly fix on YouTube as some of its regular artists post recordings from their homes or reissue previous Crazy Coqs performances.
Merryn Williams reviews Matthew Barton’s new translation of Rilke’s Duino Elegies
Poetry Review – Firing Pins: Mat Riches is intrigued by Jo Young’s poems looking at military life from an unusual angle
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2020 • Tags: books, Mat Riches, poetry