It’s a wet evening in York and Vikings are prowling the streets. For some men they might be a threat, but for Garth Marenghi, doom scriber and master of the macabre, they are but bearded weirdos. Why, dear reader is this review written in a manner of which the man himself might approve? Let me explicate. Continue reading
Unknown is a collection of twenty-seven poems by Anna Rose James and Elizabeth Cadwick Pywell. Over the past decade there has been a real movement towards centring women’s voices in poems and prose. Unknown belongs to this movement as it is inspired by women from myth and history who have been forgotten and neglected. Continue reading
What better time than Autumn to observe nature’s transient gifts and cosy up with a book? This November sees the launch of brand new Staffordshire-based poetry publisher Fawn Press, and their inaugural anthology, Elements: Natural & The Supernatural. Founded and edited by established local poet Scarlett Ward-Bennett (Ache, Verve Poetry Press), Fawn Press “aims to publish beautiful books of exceptional poetry, as we believe that poetry has the power to change lives through that transcendental connection between writer and reader.” Continue reading
In his first ever UK tour, Fane Productions and Kilimanjaro present an evening with the bestselling, much-loved author and LGBTQ+ activist, Armistead Maupin. Continue reading
Alexandra and Marc Southwood have everything. A beautiful home in York, England, comfortable jobs, two children and a neat handful of married friends. That is, until Alexandra fails to show up to work one morning and becomes the missing piece that makes this perfect suburban puzzle fall apart. Continue reading
Lost in A Sea of Glass and Tin is an intermedial performance devised by creative duo Gary and Claire, aka Gary Winters and Claire Hind, during a residency at Chicago Defibrillator Gallery and performed as part of York Literature Festival at York Theatre Royal Studio. Utterly incomprehensible, yet ultimately endearing, the show is inspired by David Lynch’s unsettling and noireesque imagination and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Continue reading
PMac Productions presents a delightfully tactile version of Alfred Shaughnessy’s adaptation of Reginald Arkell’s 1950 novel Old Herbaceous, carefully cultivated in a raised-bed greenhouse in which Herbert Pinnegar (Peter Macqueen) reminisces on vignette memories of people he’s met, kept alive through his love of gardening; the remarkable, the formidable and the enchanting. Continue reading
It seems like a strange concept – competitive poetry. But as Say Owt demonstrate, with a capacity audience for their twenty-first, coming-of-age, Slam – it is a hugely popular one. The company comprises Henry Raby and Stu Freestone, who have burgeoned from humble beginnings into York’s prominent purveyors and promoters of performance poetry and Spoken Word. Not that they don’t still flaunt that humble start; their signature backdrop, a banner home-made from an old single bed sheet, proudly holds the signatures of all the poets that have performed in its shadow. Continue reading
Portraiture is a poetry collection by York-based writer James Parker, containing verse which captures glimpses of Parker’s close friends and loved ones in intimate one-page poems. Continue reading
York-based writer Teresa Stenson scoops right to the unreachable corners of the psyche in prose both delicate and precise. Here, we review four short pieces that explore love, loss, identity and consent. Continue reading