REVIEW: JOE CARRICK-VARTY’S ‘MORE SKY’
By Stella Backhouse | And so, by continually revisiting the same outwardly banal housing-estate-Anywheresville landmarks (of time, of geography, of emotion), More Sky reinvents them as a powerful psychic map which the trauma survivor is unable to exit. Except in this case it’s two maps, one a continuation of the other. Raising questions about […]
REVIEW: SIMON FLETCHER’S ‘WILD ORCHIDS’
By Stella Backhouse | […] mostly these are evocative and celebratory poems about a landscape with which Fletcher is intimately familiar. His message centres on the contrast between the profusion, interconnectedness and infinite adaptations of the wild ecosystems he loves and the sterile uniformity of modern arable […]
WRITING ADVICE: STRONG OPENING HOOK
By Emma Evans | The genres of fictional prose and screenplay are two of the same – they’re both vehicles in storytelling – and yet they are different. As writers – before we write a single word – we need to consider how we can hook the reader in.
REVIEW: ‘UNKNOWN’ (ANNA ROSE JAMES AND ELIZABETH CHADWICK PYWELL)
By Stella Backhouse | “A sucker for hidden-history, I loved the inspiration behind Anna Rose James’ and Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell’s 2021 collaboration ‘Unknown’, described in their jointly-penned foreword as “a shared love of other women…from history and legend who have touched our lives, or the world, and left them changed. We especially wanted to honour those […]”
INTERVIEW: FIRE & DUST MEETS SCOTT COE
Performance poet, artist and current Stamford Poet Laureate Scott Coe was our virtual Fire&Dust headliner in April 2023. We caught up with him after the gig, to ask a few questions…
Mother/Daughter Dynamics: A Reading List
By Eve Volungeviciute | Family relationships are some of the most complex one can think of. Which is why it’s no surprise that there are so many works of fiction exploring them. In this particular list, we are focusing on books about mother/daughter dynamics, considering Mother’s Day celebrations around the world. While this date in the UK’s calendar has passed all the way back in March, for a lot of other countries Mother’s Day is sometimes in May. […]
Saboteur Awards 2023
In the world of independent creatives, the Saboteur Awards are a rare opportunity to celebrate the people and communities that bigger literary prizes are likely to overlook. This is HCE’s reminder for you to go vote, and also that we/projects we’re involved in are eligible to be voted for in FOUR categories…
REVIEW: KATRINA DYBZYNSKA’S ‘SECRETS OF THE DICTATOR’S WIFE’
By Stella Backhouse | I don’t know how much Katrina Dybzynska’s self-described ‘nomadic’ lifestyle has seeped into the contents of her Aryamati Prize-winning pamphlet Secrets of the Dictator’s Wife, but this is shape-shifting poetry that intrigues by its unspecific-ness. You sense that it could be placed over an array of different situations and still preserve congruence with […]
Gods and Monsters: The Vampire
By Eve Volungeviciute | Sink your teeth into this article exploring vampiric lore and tropes worldwide! Everything from ancient origins to medieval methods of breaking the curse, all the way up to the recent fictional representations of Anne Rice, ‘Buffy’ and (unavoidably) ‘Twilight’…
REVIEW: KEVIN REID’S ‘SUITCASE’
By Stella Backhouse | “During lockdown, I experienced homesickness for the first time in years. Don’t get me wrong: I was at home – what is now my home – the whole time. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the town where I grew up. The yearning to walk along certain streets became almost physical; the worry that I would never again […]”