Poem Of The Week: October Dawn By Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
October Dawn October is marigold, and yet A glass half full of wine left out To the dark heaven all night, by dawn Has dreamed a premonition Of ice across its eye as if The ice-age had begun its heave. The lawn overtrodden and strewn From the night before, and the whistling green Shrubbery are doomed. Ice Has got its spearhead into place.
Poem Of The Week: Waiting For Spring By Robin Hargreaves
Waiting for Spring No song rides on the chill breeze this morning and the oak and hazel keep their buds tight, tucked up their sleeves like tiny hands. I’m counting the impatient days with only the nodding snowdrop to show for winter’s end. It can’t be long until the bracken uncurls to breathe the wild garlic and the bluebells play their blue notes under the wind-borne curlew’s call.
Children's Book Review: Sky Surfing: Adventures In A Poetry Balloon
Nothing is better calculated to contradict a critical adult view of a children’s poetry anthology than the small person at whom the book is aimed.
Poem Of The Week: Winter Morning By Richard Meier
Winter Morning Shyly coated in greys, blacks, browns - to keep us out of sight of the cold - we weren't expecting this this morning: sun and shadows, like a summer's evening, like summer teasing.
Christmas Poem Of The Week: Unto Us A Child is Born By Beth Brooke
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Unto Us A Child Is Born Triptych egg tempura on oak panels Traditional as a devotional aid, this triptych of the birth of Christ is re-presented in the modern idiom: pregnancy test in Mary's hand, Joseph in running kit, this is a low key Annunciation. In the central panel the Holy Infant, delivered by Caeserean section, is handed to his mother by an angel in scrubs.
Poem Of The Week: Vera, Waiting By Shash Trevett
Vera, Waiting She had prepared for a telegram prepared for what she would say to the Post Office boy. Prepared her retreat to her room, to slit open the envelope and allow the news to make a sortie into her mind. An assault anticipated. Yet when the news came, it was by telephone. And she was in Brighton, not Buxton – her dug-out two hundred miles away – her parapet bare of barbed wire.
England’s Dreaming: House Anthems By Ralph Dartford
The British class system that Tony Harrison spent many productive hours ‘banging his head against’, sustains, if not in the rigid hierarchical structures that had begun to creak by the time Richard Hoggart’s seminal post-war study, The Uses of Literacy, appeared, then in food banks, overflowing gaols, and masochistic political alignments.
Forareian: Avenue Cars By Chris Speck
‘Forareian’. Anyone recognise it? It’s the only way I can think of to spell it – as it is spoken - since I’ve never seen it written down. My mother-in-law was a southerner and one of the first people to let me know I had a northern accent (despite my being subjected to elocution lessons as a child).
Poem Of The Week: The Men Who Drive Tractors By Wendy Pratt
The Men Who Drive Tractors Some of the men drive tractors too fast down the lane as if they are riding a great red bull into a Greek myth and my existence is as background to their story.
Poem Of The Week: Pearl By Stephen Littlejohn
Pearl It's made from cinnabar and bone, iron oxide, nervous glances caught in oil, wedding cake palaces, long silences, great bursts of music, singing, a furtive deal done down a shaded Trento street beneath apartment buildings cluttered with rug-saddled balustrades, warm colours hung feudally as flags and women's laughter spiralling groundward like spilled change.
Peace And Desolation: Some Service To The State By Aidan McQuade
It takes skill and an open mind to steer an even-handed course through the minefield of recent Irish history.
Poem Of The Week: Hang By Ian McMillan
Hang A charity shop coat hanger Holding the past And a possible future In equal measure, Singing an anthem Of circular capital Flying from M&S Over to Wombwell And making a landing Behind possibility Over by blue high heels’ Tottering history, Telling their story. Nobody’s listening. What you see is what you get.
Q & A With Susannah Wise, Author Of Okay, Then, That’s Great
Marnie's life is a powderkeg of confusion – visions of her long-dead sister, dreams of being a man, and a turbulent friendship with a woman who may or may not be Katherine Mansfield. Add a chaotic family life, an unreliable therapist, and quantum entanglement to the mix, and Marnie’s hands are very full indeed! Will she ever find clarity?
Slow Horses Creator Mick Herron To Chair Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival 2025
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Harrogate International Festivals has announced highly acclaimed, internationally bestselling thriller writer Mick Herron as Programming Chair for the 2025 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, the world’s largest and most prestigious celebration of crime fiction.
Survival And Family: Pachinko By Min Jin Lee
Wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home is a favourite song of mine by Paul Young. I remember driving up the motorway, en route to visit family in Scotland, when we saw in the distance, the high-rise flats of Glasgow.
Poem Of The Week: Tongues Of Water By Niall Campbell
Tongues of Water We went each Sunday for the mass recited in my parent’s language that wasn’t mine. The Gaelic gospel that was just sound, pure sound, to me. I rose and kneeled, and listened as my people traded vowel for vowel; my whole small world, this flowing water. Back then, I sat and heard the ocean in their unknowable call, that same unknowable response.
Poem Of The Week: Mexico 70 By Ralph Dartford
Mexico 70 There were rumours of decimalization at Manor House Junior school. It was the summer of 1970, of Esso World Cup coins – free with a tenner of four star. My Dad didn’t own a car. My best friend's name was Zolly. He had a Rediffusion colour TV. A yelping dog called Bugsy, his soft bosomed mum made me shy. And Rosa taught me to dance and swallow a pickled herring.
Book Review: 5 - A Poetry Anthology By Helen Bowell, Prerana Kumar, Eva Lewis, Laura Potts, Ruth Yates
It is a mistake, probably, to seek consonance in the work of several poets whose contributions to Poetry Business’ latest anthology are nothing if not eclectic. Yet there are contiguous stylistic threads in this fine, slim volume, whose presence may or may not be a consequence of the judicious application of editorial inference.
A History Of Terry In Ten Anecdotes: Review Of Terry Deary At The Durham Book Festival
Sunderland-born author, Terry Deary, appeared at Durham Book Festival on Saturday, 12 October, to discuss his first history book for adults, A History of Britain in Ten Enemies (available now). From the Ancient Romans to the Nazis, this new book explores the enemies that define a nation.
Yellowface: An Evening With R. F. Kuang
The inspiration of a TED talk, the exhilaration of a rock concert, and the education of a lecture – that was my evening with Rebecca F. Kuang at Durham Book Festival. From the moment she began her witty personal anecdotes, Kuang captivated a sold-out audience.
Thrilling Fiction With Lucy Foley (the Midnight Feast) And Matthew Blake (anna O)
Uneasy pauses… Furtive glances... Pallid expressions… All elements of a killer crime fiction novel.
Translation Slam at Collected Books
Collected Books on the Riverwalk was a charmingly cosy place to be on the final night of Durham Book Festival. Many of the audience members settling in for the Translation Slam opted to skirt around the seating arrangement and take in the bookshelves, or order themselves a warm drink before the event began in earnest.
An Evening With Jackie Kay
This year, Durham Book Festival had the pleasure of welcoming to the Gala Theatre stage poets Jackie Kay and Romalyn Ante.
Poem Of The Week Children's Special: Leaving By Rhiannon Oliver
Leaving We have to leave the smell in the hall. We can’t pack the bumpy wallpaper Or the way the back door squeaks When you lean on it. We can’t take the neighbours, Or their cakes, Or the closeness of the church bells That ding dong their wedding song On sunny Saturdays. We have to leave the sunshine that Joins me on my pillow before school.
Scarred Streets And Promises: Close To Home By Michael Magee
The history of Northern Ireland has long interested me. My mother was born in Belfast and we still have family living in the province. History lessons at both O and A level covered the topic and Seamus Heaney’s poetry, reflecting as it does on his life in rural Northern Ireland, seems to have regularly invaded my Lit. studies.
In Conversation Kat Brown
Kat Brown is an author, journalist and commentator whose book It's Not a Bloody Trend smashes the stereotypical idea of ADHD with scientific evidence, historical context and personal experience. Kat is also the author of No One Talks About This Stuff, a groundbreaking anthology sharing people’s untold experiences of infertility and baby loss.
Poem: Keep Smiling By Steve Whitaker
I once knew a hairdresser of the old school, a 'short, back and sides' barber whose everyday valediction to newly cropped customers never varied - 'keep smiling!', he'd say as you left his upstairs shop.
Poem Of The Week: Pornography For Pandas By Victoria Gatehouse
Pornography for Pandas Yang Guang (Sunshine) raises himself on hind legs, reaches for the carrot, a little higher building muscle for the two-minute act to come, his enclosure dim lit, smooth jazz dreamy daubed with the urine of Tian Tian (Sweetie) when last in season – all this to get him in the mood his bodyweight in food each day for stamina and now, a forty-inch screen, erected beyon…
Artists Bring New Blood to Classic Dracula
An artist-led independent publisher in Whitby has launched a limited edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula as part of a wider revival and growing appetite for illustrated classics.
Book Review: The Night-Soil Men By Bill Broady
In an interview with Richard Owain Roberts,* Bill Broady recalls the unformed stylistic ambition of his teenage years with the kind of serendipity that propelled Harold Wilson from the doorstep of no.10 as a holidaying child to his later Prime Ministerial tenure.