The Reading List, week 4: Heaney, O’Brien, Williams

  As promised, The Reading List continues … District & Circle, Seamus Heaney (Faber, 2006) Everything you’d expect from a Heaney collection: poignant but unsentimental recollections of the past, images you can’t get out of your head days later, a familiar strangeness, the ghosts of various characters from Edward Thomas and Dorothy Wordsworth to HarryRead more ⟶

Sestinas – your opinion please!

So what do we think of sestinas? A fun exercise? A thankless exercise? A beautiful form best used sparingly? Hackneyed tell-tale sign of creative writing workshop-itis? Should have left it to Dante? I expect I’m not alone in loving word puzzles so I’m tempted to attempt my first sestina. Yes! A sestina virgin! I confessRead more ⟶

More holiday reading

I’m enjoying Ted Hughes Letters and can see it going on well into 2013. Other reading matter that has crept into the bedroom includes The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, which I’m reading for my book group but actually it’s been on my bookshelf for some years. I went through an Australian thing a while back,Read more ⟶