In celebration of April being National Poetry Month I am going to be reading Sarah Howe’s Loop of Jade which won the T.S.Eliot prize in January 2016. It works out at about a poem a day and once a week I’ll post an update on my progress. You’d be most welcome to read along with…
Author: Caroline Davies
Our sons as well at New Venture Theatre Brighton
“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers,who sent their sons…
The Thiepval Memorial and Paul Emmanuel’s ‘Lost Men’
On the walls of the First World War Memorial on Thiepval ridge are the names of 72,194 men, most of whom were killed during the Battle of the Somme (1st July -18th November 1916). They have no known grave, either because their remains were never found (they were obliterated by shell-fire) or because by the…
The Year of the Pamphlet – Cherriman, Hershman and Josephy
Either by chance or by choice poetry pamphlets are becoming my favourite things to read this year. I’ve already mentioned Becky Cherriman’s Echolocation which was published earlier this month from Mother’s Milk Books and her poems which have such grit in them. Then in the same week Tania Hershman’s Nothing Here is Wild, Everything is…
Review of Becky Cherriman’s Echolocation
This is going to be different from the usual sort of review you write after reading work by someone you don’t know or have only heard of by repute. I came to Echolocation having worked with Becky, during 2014 under the Cinnamon Press mentor scheme, principally on her first collection, Empires of Clay. I did…
Becky Cherriman and Echolocation
Today I’m delighted to welcome Becky Cherriman to the blog. She is a writer, creative writing facilitator and performer from Yorkshire. Her pamphlet, Echolocation is being launched this week and is available from Mother’s Milk Books – a poetic journey into single motherhood, infertility, the adoption process and more from a writer who has lived them…
An artist date
I’d decided I wasn’t going to try to emulate Sarah Salway who will be doing weekly artist’s dates during 2016 but her most recent blog post had planted a seed in my subconscious about having more fun in 2016. During January the irrepressible Amy Souza has organised another art/poetry postcard exchange as happened last January…
Ready for the T.S Eliot Prize
The first of the year’s poetry higlights is fast approaching with the T.S.Eliot Prize Reading on Sunday at the Royal Festival hall. There are, as always, ten books on the shortlist and I’m more agog than usual about this year’s choices. So much so that I’ve managed to read three of them. The weekend will begin…
Now All Roads lead to France
I have been taking advantage of the holiday to catch up on my reading. ‘Now All Roads Lead to France by Matthew Hollis is about the last five years of Edward Thomas’ life and the time in which he wrote all his poetry. It is perfect reading material for the quiet time between Christmas and…
Remembering Louis Doffman 29th September 1918 and Percy Honeybill 2nd September 1918
Two of the poems from my forthcoming collection, Voices from Stone and Bronze, have been published on London Grip for the winter. The first poem, What Louis Doffman knows, is in memory of a young man, Louis, who fought under an assumed name. I was introduced to his story by Jeremy Banning who took me…