Tag: historical

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Insomnia

Lee Tisdale admires a novella, published complete with its own censorship history, satirising Soviet rule in Latvia

PUBLISHED ON: 30/06/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Alberts Bels’ accessible and compelling novella Insomnia depicts Soviet-era Latvia through the eyes of Mr Eduards Dārziņš. This man allows a fleeing w …

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The Shaking City

Oliver Heath enjoys a poetry collection which addresses the pitfalls of memorialisation, memory and history

PUBLISHED ON: 30/06/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Many of us find ourselves reflecting on the past with a certain fondness as we head towards uncertain times. There is an absolute quality to history, …

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Footnotes to Water

Desi Tsvetkova is fascinated by a poetry collection that explores threatened tongues through giving voice to culverted rivers in Bangor and Paris, and touches on themes of lost heritage, herd mentality and cultural pollution

PUBLISHED ON: 30/06/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Zoë Skoulding is a poet and translator whose newest collection with Seren deals with bodies of water and how they connect to people’s lives. Footnotes …

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Wing

PUBLISHED ON: 30/06/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Nature takes centre stage in Matthew Francis’ poetry collection, Wing. Published by Faber, it was The Guardian’s Poetry Book of The Month for February …

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The Price of the Picturesque

The package tour was invented in Wales. In the week the ‘travel ban’ is likely to be lifted, Chris Moss calls for a reinvention of Welsh tourism after coronavirus

PUBLISHED ON: 30/06/20

CATEGORY: Opinion

The Emptying of Covid-19. It sounds like the title of a Thomas Pynchon novel. But for three long months, the skies cleared, the beaches were clean and …

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RS Thomas: Letter to a Young Poet

John Cap on what advice RS Thomas gave him in 1994    

PUBLISHED ON: 29/06/20

CATEGORY: Letters

In his poem, ‘To a Young Poet’, RS Thomas wrote: ‘For the first twenty years you are still growing, / bodily that is; as a poet, of course,/ you are n …

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Shattercone

Places seem to connect with each other more successfully than do people in this follow-up interconnected story collection, writes Jacob Powell

PUBLISHED ON: 29/06/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Shattercone is the second collection of linked short stories by author Tristan Hughes, and includes a number that have been previously published. All …

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The Short Knife

With its plot twist worthy of George RR Martin, Desi Tsvetkova enjoys this children’s novel set during Britain’s shift of power from Celtic Roman to Anglo-Saxon

PUBLISHED ON: 16/06/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Elen Caldecott is an author with an arsenal of children’s books to her name, though she has also worked in a variety of different fields, including ar …

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Jim Neat: The Case of a Young Man Down on His Luck

Desi Tsvetkova concludes that this hybrid novel/confessional narrative poem is an exceptional piece of literature

PUBLISHED ON: 05/05/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Mary J Oliver’s father passed away in 1983, but it isn’t until twenty-five years later that a spark ignites inside the author, urging her to find out …

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Tazmamart: 18 Years in Morocco’s Secret Prison

Amy Aed explores the physical and mental struggle of Aziz BineBine during his 1972 imprisonment in a secret Moroccan prison, retold throughout the novel Tazmamart

PUBLISHED ON: 17/04/20

CATEGORY: Blog

The year was 1972 and Aziz BineBine was a young soldier caught up in the failed coup d’état against King Hassan II in Morocco. Days after following or …

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