That's a recipe for a convivial and enriching evening, and that's exactly what we got last Thursday at the launch of the fourth Loose Muse anthology, downstairs at Cottons on Exmouth Market. Once again, Agnes Meadows and her co-editors have put together a varied and top-class collection of writing by women who have attended one …
poetry panic attack
I spent Saturday morning sitting at my desk, thinking about a new poem, jotting down words and phrases, delving into dictionaries and reference books, nurturing that little knot of something in the back of my brain that I hope will evolve, take shape, emerge slowly onto the page. So I was already in a rather …
a short, vaguely feminist, marginally existentialist reading list
My younger sister asked me this week to help her with a request from a work colleague, who had approached her for suggestions of female writers to read. Her colleague likes Sylvia Plath, apparently, is interested in feminism and existentialism, and is planning to take four months off work to go to France and read …
Continue reading a short, vaguely feminist, marginally existentialist reading list
encores galore
I'm listening to a blistering performance of Glazunov's Piano Concerto No.2 live on the radio from the BBC Proms, performed by Daniil Trifonov and the London Symphony Orchestra. As the piece finishes, there's sustained and rapturous applause until the audience is rewarded with a thrilling encore. For the last five or so years the BBC …
posters and coasters
Biblical weather last night as we ventured far north, deep into zone 3 and along the Seven Sisters Road, to the private view of an exhibition of posters at G511ERY. A fabulously unlikely location for a gallery, next to a kebab shop in Tottenham, but just the spot to showcase some maverick printmaking. The work on …
Souvenirs de France
Paris 5th-8th July Hot and sunny throughout. We're based in the 10th arrondissement. It's lively and vibrant, especially along the banks of the Canal Saint-Martin, which are thronged with Parisians picnicking, rendez-vousing, imbibing and conversing late into the evening. I feel at home. It seems that Parisians have been starved of good weather as much …
Open Plan
Open Plan is the neat title for a volume of poems by Graham Fulton, which distills with wit and precision the strange reality of being an office-worker. Published by Smokestack Books in 2011, Open Plan is a thoroughly rewarding read, belying what at first may sound like unpromising material - the daily grind in an …
An Aldeburgh Diary
Friday 7th June For some time , I've wanted to visit Aldeburgh and see the places where Benjamin Britten lived and worked, to wander along the beach and immerse myself in the landscape that inspired him. This weekend, at last, we're going, coinciding with the opening of the 66th Aldeburgh Music Festival, which was originally …
not i . . . but i was there . . .
in the pitch black . . . a mouth emerges floating . . . words begin . . . she speaks fast unstoppable a terrible troubled disembodied outpouring . . . snatches of memories cowslips tears falling into a palm realisation they must be hers . . . the one time she cried . . …
lisson up
Straight from work yesterday evening to the Lisson Gallery for two exhibition previews. Canadian artist Rodney Graham has new and recent work on show at 29 Bell Street. Striking photographic tableaux are mounted in large lightboxes, the colours rich and intense, the images hyperreal. And also very witty. A scientist in his lab stares pensively …
Hilaire 