As with all of Blackford’s work, Fil and Harry manages the perfect balance between fast moving suspense, engaging characterisation, and gentle accessible humour. The work is never too sweet nor too dark, and the tone works for all ages, including adults, who will find Fil and Harry a surprisingly pleasurable read, whether read alone or aloud to a willing young listener (something I highly recommend!).
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A review of Fog and Light edited by Diane Frank
Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here is a real smorgasbord of San Franciscan scenery, energy and art. Harvey Milk, Castro Street, the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Giants Stadium and Candlestick Park – Orlando Cepeda and Willie Mays! – all appear in these pages. It’s been almost fifty years since I was in San Francisco, but it all comes back vividly in these poems.
A review of Henry David Thoreau : A Life by Laura Dassow Walls
I reveled in this book because, unlike others before it, it is not fragmented, incongruent, or just a compilation of interesting facts. But rather, it reads as though Thoreau lived much more recently and the author had interviewed in-person, first-hand witnesses to his life simply because it flows from birth to death without a sense of missing information or lapses in time. On any given page you may learn about the weather that day or how late Thoreau stayed up as if it were all recorded and timestamped on videotape for the author to view and re-view.
Interview with Lee Zacharias
The author of What a Wonderful World This Could Be talks about her new novel and its timeliness, her research, on writing about difficult and painful subjects, how she managed the many paths and threads of the book, the book’s long path to publication, and lots more.
New giveaway!
We have a copy of What a Wonderful World This Could Be by Lee Zacharias to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of June from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of Journey to Tatev by Lillian Avedian
Journey to Tatev is a love poem to the self and to the other, written along the trajectory of a single journey. These airy, deeply rhythmic poems encompass the multi-lingual voice of a migrant, coming-of-age, coming out, coming to terms with the past and future simultaneously. Words and notes dance across the page, engaging all of the senses in this vibrant and deeply moving collection.
An interview with Sherra Aguirre
The author of Joyful, Delicious, Vegan talks about her self and her childhood, her new book, her route to becoming a writer, how she deals with writers’ block, the inspiration for her book, her favourite authors, support network and more.
New giveaway!
We have a copy of Joyful, Delicious Vegan by Sherra Aguirre to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of May from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of Chronicity by Michael J Leach
Leach manages the visual in particularly powerful ways in Chronicity. The concrete poems in the collection take on many forms, weaving and working through, around, between and besides their subject matter, playing with font, space, shape, and design to stretch out time, slow the reader, twist back on themselves, emphasise and create sound paths in the ear.
A review of Popular Longing by Natalie Shapero
At the center of the collection is the breathtaking tour de force entitled “Don’t Spend It All in One Place,” a series of fourteen fourteen-line poems (though not exactly “sonnets” in a metrical sense), whose themes of violence and art and time, coming “unstuck” in time, make one think of Billy Pilgrim, Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-hero in Slaughterhouse Five. There’s a similar dark humor at work in Shapero’s poems.