Category: Book reviews
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Crosscut your community
In November 2021, the news hit Hastings that a group of refugees had drowned trying to cross the channel. It hit us hard, because being a southern coastal town, the victims of failed attempts tend to wash up on our shore. This has never been a problem we are able to ignore. Local reactions are […]
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Left Books Forward
Heads up – this looks like a political post, and it is – but mainly, it’s one of my ‘Books for Christmas’ soapbox posts… We in Hastings were quite surprised when we heard that Momentum was an organisation for wild young Trots. We in Momentum Hastings thought we were a group of all sorts of […]
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The Astonishing Worlds of Mandy Pannett
How many years ago did I jump on a train to Arundel to have lunch with Mandy Pannett, and talk about organising a poetry collection competition? It happened before the Corbyn movement swept me away for several years of single-minded battle; it happened before the most urgent women’s campaign of my lifetime, and before COVID, […]
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Can you see us under all these bushels?
I always thought it was something leafy and twiggy we were hidden under but it turns out it’s a kind of bowl. Bushels (or in some translations, ‘vessels’) “And no man, when he hath lighted a lamp, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but putteth it on a stand, that […]
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Women writing poetry – scary?
Ask a poet for a bit of text to for the back jacket, to encourage readers to open her book, and you get this…. Wormwood, earth and honey Selected poems by Catherine Edmunds teasel scratches, bramble catches deep inside my den of mischief mud pies splatter, cracked plates clatter if you dare to enter here […]