Poet, performer, professor and new media artist Hazel Smith drops by to read from and talk about her latest book of poetry Word Migrants. Hazel is an incredible reader and her readings alone are worth listening to, but she also…
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of Word Migrants by Hazel Smith
Hazel Smith’s Word Migrants is a poetry collection that is utterly relevant right now. Smith brings her cross-media poetic aesthetics to such topics as racism, the plight of refugees, diaspora, stereotypes, climate change, grief, aging and death, semiotics and literary theory all in a way that weaves and intersects seamlessly. Though there’s a neat circularity in the book – starting and ending with disappearances, Word Migrants is organised into five sections, each with a slightly different focus. The first, “The Forgiveness Website”, focuses on the nostalgia and sense of loss that comes with displacement. This chapter explores refugees and migration, but also the motion from past to present, and of all that we lose in our identities as we try to find ways to live and forgive in the face of oppression.
A review of Review of Researching Creative Writing by Jen Webb
This is a book that has the potential to help creative writers ‘make knowledge festive’ in the process of creating their research projects. It is structured logically so as to make for optimal comprehension. It is superbly written and gives exciting examples of writers and books that illustrate the process of researching creative writing and writing as research.
A review of Local Time: a memoir of cities, friendships and the writing life by Inez Baranay
Baranay’s memoir is about travelling, art and culture(s) and food, home (and not having one), writing, and friendship. She begins by telling the reader that an inheritance has allowed her to plan a trip to Europe in 2006, one that will enable her to live well while she’s travelling but not be away too long as she does not want to stop writing for too many months. The author does not expect to write while she’s away, which gives us the first hint of a commitment to writing that is strong but realistic. In fact, she does write, and she describes how her life really revolves around writing and reading as well as friendship and human connection.
A review of Cure by Jo Marchant
Marchant’s extensive tour of a range of placebo based trials around the world where doctors and patients who are seeing powerful results (thereby perhaps changing the whole meaning of the word “placebo”) on some previously intractable conditions. It’s not just the “power of positive thinking”, but actual real chemicals such as endorphins, dopamines, and hormones being released in response to a number of different stimulations.
The UK’s In-Out Referendum by David Owen
At last, a grown-up book about the issue of the moment. David Owen’s booklet was written before David Cameron had completed his renegotiation, so-called, of Britain’s EU membership. Since then Owen has come out in favour of leaving the EU, a clear indication that he doesn’t believe the prime minister has got a good enough deal.
A review of Dire Salvation by Charles B Neff
Characters are well fleshed, dialogue is credible and serves to focus storyline set against an evocative backdrop of small town intrigue arising in the Cascade Mountains. The mystery unfolds via Neff’s understanding of the area portrayed coupled with personal research. Neff draws upon a lifetime of experience having taught on the university level, served as administrator at four U.S. universities, led international development projects in Colombia and Russia to provide grist for his novels.
A review of The Arrival of Missives by Aliya Whiteley
The Arrival of Missives is an immensely readable book. It contains delightfully light characterizations in which people are encapsulated by a phrase, a tone of voice, a gesture. And, towards the end of the novel, intentionally or not (what does it matter?), there is an image straight out of Hamlet that provides beauty and horror in equal measure.
A review of My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Jane Caro talks about Plain-Speaking Jane
Author, novelist, journalist, broadcaster, columnist, advertising writer and social commentator Jane Caro, chats about her memoir Plain-Speaking Jane, about the power of plain speaking – not just in terms of being candid, but in terms of breaking silence and comunicating…