REVIEW: DEAN BROWNE’S ‘KITCHENS AT NIGHT’
By Stella Backhouse | Dean Browne’s 2022 pamphlet ‘Kitchens at Night’ […] asks not only how it feels to be in possession of something that is difficult to access but is still an intrinsic part of the psyche, but also how you conceptualise your relationship with such an entity and your relationship with artistic representations of it that have been tried already. […]
INTERVIEW: FIRE & DUST MEETS EMMA PURSHOUSE
Emma Purshouse is a poetry slam champion, performing regularly at spoken word nights and festivals far and wide, and was recently the first-ever Poet Laureate for the City of Wolverhampton. On 1st June, Emma was our Fire&Dust headliner at Café Morso, where her lively poetry set was well-received by the crowd. We caught up with her after the gig, to ask a few questions…
REVIEW: DAVID MORLEY’S ‘FURY’
By Stella Backhouse | ‘Fury’, David Morley’s 2020 collection, is a place where language is put to the test – specifically, the test of how important to the achievement of meaning is precise understanding. One way Morley explores this is through liberal use of Romani (the Romany language) throughout the book; but in an interview given at the time […]
INTERVIEW: FIRE & DUST MEETS DEVJANI BODEPUDI
Devjani Bodepudi is a writer and teacher whose debut pamphlet ‘For the daughters carried here on the hips of their mothers’ was recently published by Fawn Press. On 4th May, Devjani headlined at our Fire & Dust poetry event. We caught up with her after the gig, to ask a few questions…
Gods and Monsters: The Banshee
By Eve Volungeviciute | Another instalment of the mythological creature deep dive series has arrived! This time we are looking at a fairly well-known – however, not as mainstream – entity, the banshee. Join Eve for a quick look at the the origins, appearance and portrayals of this mythical being…
INTERVIEW: FIRE & DUST MEETS LANTERN CARRIER
Manatita, a.k.a The Lantern Carrier, endeavours to reach his audience’s hearts, to elevate, to enlighten and to bring wisdom through his poetry. On 11th May 2023, he was the guest headliner at Fire&Dust on Zoom. We caught up with him after the gig, to ask a few questions…
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 […]”