“is there something in adopting the voice of a god, but giving him very human qualities and frailties? It turned out that adopting a persona that revolved at once about both being powerful and powerless was a great parallel for exploring subjects like climate change.”
They were stones in a champagne flute,
I was always bound to smash.
But they were there for a while,
hanging on, two faceless punters waiting
for the gag, and then it all slipped out
of me as easily as a giggle. Once is a mistake.
Twice is careless. By the end of it
you could hear a pin drop in my heart.
“is there something in adopting the voice of a god, but giving him very human qualities and frailties? It turned out that adopting a persona that revolved at once about both being powerful and powerless was a great parallel for exploring subjects like climate change.”
They were stones in a champagne flute,
I was always bound to smash.
But they were there for a while,
hanging on, two faceless punters waiting
for the gag, and then it all slipped out
of me as easily as a giggle. Once is a mistake.
Twice is careless. By the end of it
you could hear a pin drop in my heart.
“How long he sat in his car he couldn’t say, but he pulled out of the hospital car park when the noise of an approaching ambulance interrupted his thoughts. He somehow ended up on the Sea Point Promenade again, sitting on the bench they had sat on so many times before. By the time the sun set, painting the Cape Town sky a marvellous orange-yellow-purple, he had made his decision.”
Fiction: “Hugmanay 1983 – ah’m sat oan the couch in the livin’ room. Telly’s oan an’ it’s jist me an’ ma muther an faither cos ma twa bruthers are oot wi’ their pals. Scotch an’ Wry afore some Hugmanay show comes oan efter. Ah’m hopin’ the 50p slot meter disnae run oot on oor rented TV …”
Shortly after I left my job, a friend said she was surprised, she thought I cared. I told her I left because I cared.
Fiction: “She wishes that she had kept a written record of all the epic bloody nonsense that has come out of his mouth over the years because she could have gained some kind of minor social media fame and parleyed a book deal out of it to boot: Shit My Stupid Shag Buddy Says.”
“is there something in adopting the voice of a god, but giving him very human qualities and frailties? It turned out that adopting a persona that revolved at once about both being powerful and powerless was a great parallel for exploring subjects like climate change.”
They were stones in a champagne flute,
I was always bound to smash.
But they were there for a while,
hanging on, two faceless punters waiting
for the gag, and then it all slipped out
of me as easily as a giggle. Once is a mistake.
Twice is careless. By the end of it
you could hear a pin drop in my heart.
“In the case of obstetric and gynaecological history, it felt important to resist chronological or medical linearity. Working towards a happy ending would have been too easy and would have felt like a formal parroting of the unstoppable trajectory of ‘scientific progress’ that I wanted the book to question. “
“The 7 – 11 age group is for me the most joyful of childhood – their imagination is boundless, they are brave and unjudgmental, and the self-consciousness of the teen years has not yet set in.”
“What is happening in Iran is heart-breaking, and this poem is testament to that, it is also paying homage to my Father and my Persian heritage, of which I’m so proud.”
“I’ll state up front: I love Helen Mort’s poetry. Her writing is taut, lyrical, kind, brave, intelligent, beautiful.”
“If Stubbs set out explore how humans have the capacity to worry about ‘big existential events’ when they also face everyday problems, she has succeeded.”
Harvey inhabits the farm, then the woods, building the world for the audience as she goes.
Listen: In this episode of ANP, Louise, Christina and Peter critique Sacaran Nights
Author Not Present is a podcast in which Louise Hare, Christina Carè, and Peter J Coles critique anonymous submitted pieces. In the sixth episode, Louise, Christina, and Peter discuss ‘The Entertainer’. Listen to find out what they liked and what they thought could be improved as they deal with structure
In the fourteenth episode of the MIR Podcast, Peter J Coles talks with the winner of the Bricklane Bookshop short story prize, 2020 Alice Haworth-Booth, and the head of the prize, Kate Ellis. They discuss writing climate change and what it takes to run a big prize. Show Notes: Bricklane Bookshop
This episode was recorded before the outbreak of the current crisis so we apologise for any inaccuracies! Author Not Present is a podcast in which Louise Hare, Christina Carè, and Peter J Coles critique anonymous submitted pieces. In the third episode, Christina and Peter are joined by author Jarred McGinnis
This episode was recorded before the outbreak of the current crisis so we apologise for any inaccuracies! Author Not Present is a podcast in which Louise Hare, Christina Carè, and Peter J Coles critique anonymous submitted pieces. In the third episode, they discuss ‘Magrit’ – a quirky story of a