May 12, 2022 Garden Physic by Sylvia Legris Review by Anna Hollingsworth Imagine all the life crawling in the undergrowth of a garden. In Garden Physic, Sylvia Legris digs it all up…
May 3, 2022 Ephemeron by Fiona Benson Review by Anna Hollingsworth On the cover of Fiona Benson’s Ephemeron, there is a butterfly trapped in a spider’s web. It’s a melancholy image,…
September 16, 2021 All the Names Given by Raymond Antrobus Review by Anna Hollingsworth ”your 2am text / lit / like a dog panting / on her screen / hot rattling engine / pile…
July 13, 2021 A Vertical Art – Oxford Lectures by Simon Armitage Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth According to a recent Ipsos MORI poll, 90 per cent of people said that they’d read a novel in the…
July 8, 2021 Broken Lights, by Basil Ramsay Anderson Reviewed by Rob Spence Years ago, I was teaching an undergraduate class on the topic of the poetry of the bard of Orkney, George…
May 11, 2021 Anthony Burgess, Collected Poems, edited by Jonathan Mann Reviewed by Rob Spence Inevitably, when Anthony Burgess is mentioned, people who have heard of him will associate him with the notorious novel and…
May 4, 2021 The Craft of Poetry by Lucy Newlyn Reviewed by Rob Spence Lucy Newlyn is a intriguing literary figure. She had a career as an Oxford don, publishing well-regarded studies of Romantic…
April 1, 2021 The Stone Age by Jen Hadfield Reviewed by Hayley Anderton It’s seven years since Jen Hadfield’s last collection, Byssus, came out. This was the point when I really became aware…
March 18, 2021 Keats by Lucasta Miller Reviewed by Harriet It may not have escaped your attention that 2021 is the 200th anniversary of the death of John Keats. Yes, on…
December 10, 2020 Dearly by Margaret Atwood & other poetry highlights of 2020 By Rebecca Foster Dearly by Margaret Atwood In her career of more than five decades, Margaret Atwood has produced work in an astounding range…
July 21, 2020 My Summer Reading: Gawain and The Green Knight – Michael Smith Members of the Shiny reviewing team share previously published books from their shelves that they’re reading now… Review by Rob Spence Readers of Shiny…
June 11, 2020 Victory For The Slain by Hugh Lofting Review by Rob Spence When we think of First World War poets, it’s safe to say that Hugh Lofting will not be the first…
May 21, 2020 Rendang by Will Harris Review by Anna Hollingsworth Will Harris has been described as one of the most important young poets in the UK, and his debut collection…
June 20, 2019 Moder Dy by Roseanne Watt Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I’ve been following Roseanne Watt for a while via twitter and Instagram with the sense that this was somebody worth…
May 14, 2019 The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin, by Geoffrey Hill Edited by Kenneth Haynes Reviewed by Rob Spence When Geoffrey Hill died in 2016, his monumental Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952 -2012 was still fresh, its astonishing…
November 20, 2018 Under the Rock: The Poetry of a Place by Benjamin Myers Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Benjamin Myers has been having a bit of a moment. In 2017 Bluemoose Books published his fifth novel, The Gallows…
November 6, 2018 The Flame by Leonard Cohen Edited by Robert Faggen & Alexandra Pleshoyano Review by Rob Spence For a while in the mid sixties to the early seventies, the singer-songwriter…
June 1, 2017 Deaths of the Poets by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts Review by Harriet The deaths of poets matter to us because they become a lens through which to look at the poems. So say…
December 12, 2016 William and Dorothy Wordsworth: All in Each Other by Lucy Newlyn Reviewed by Harriet She who dwells with me, with whom I’ve livedWith such communion, that no place on earthCan ever seem a solitude to…
August 16, 2016 Penguin Modern Poets – The Relaunch By Karen Langley If you’re a reader of a certain age who went through the British school system, you most likely encountered the Penguin…
August 16, 2016 Penguin Modern Poets – Books 1 and 2 Reviewed by Karen Langley As you might well have gathered from my piece in the Bookbuzz section, Penguin has relaunched their iconic Modern Poets series;…
June 8, 2016 Poems by Katherine Mansfield Reviewed by Simon Katherine Mansfield is, of course, best known for her short stories – and rightly so; for my money, she is the…
January 26, 2016 Unicorn: The Poetry of Angela Carter, with an Essay by Rosemary Hill Reviewed by Harriet I was a slow starter where Angela Carter was concerned. I was given what I now think of as her masterpiece, Nights…
December 1, 2015 A Lion Was Learning to Ski by Ranjit Bolt Reviewed by Annabel Ranjit Bolt is well known as a translator and playwright. He came to prominence when two of his translations of French…
January 20, 2015 Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, illustrated by Allen Crawford Written by Max Dunbar Moments Before the Wind: The Illustrated Whitman Has anyone tried to illustrate Whitman before? Has anyone not felt dizzy and…
