12 Saturday Nov 2016
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Chelsea Hotel No. 2, Lana Del Rey, Leonard Cohen, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Sisters of Mercy, Winter Lady
I first heard his music while watching Robert Altman’s anti-Western, McCabe and Mrs Miller, in Camden during the late eighties. That cinema is now long-gone, but the film – made not long before I was born – left a lasting impression. Continue reading
16 Monday Jun 2014
‘My Baby Shot Me Down’ is the subtitle of ‘Bang Bang’, an eerie ballad made famous by Cher and Nancy Sinatra in the 1960s, and more recently revived in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. And it is now the title of a new anthology, showcasing women writers. On the cover a paint-splattered angel, or ballerina – a little girl’s figurine – dons a gas-mask for what looks like a psychedelic reworking of Nirvana’s In Utero. Continue reading
17 Friday Jan 2014
Posted in Anniversaries, Books, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry
≈ Comments Off on Bookish Birthdays: Anne Brontë
Born on this day in 1820, Anne Brontë – author of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – has sometimes been overshadowed by her sisters, but was a great novelist, poet and social critic in her own right. You can read my tribute to her at For Books’ Sake.
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15 Wednesday May 2013
Assia Wevill, born on this day in 1927, is perhaps best-known as the woman who came between the most celebrated literary couple of the twentieth century, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. I explore her extraordinary life – and tragic death – over at For Books’ Sake.
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22 Friday Feb 2013
My tribute to American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, born on this day in 1892, is published at For Books’ Sake.
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09 Wednesday Nov 2011
My tribute to the American poet, Anne Sexton, born on this day in 1924, is published at For Books’ Sake
30 Saturday Jul 2011
One of my favourite authors, Emily Jane Brontё, was born on this day, July 30th, in 1818. Read my birthday profile over at For Books’ Sake
More Brontё-related posts here
10 Friday Jun 2011
Posted in Books, Fiction, History, Non-Fiction, Poetry
≈ Comments Off on Lives Like Loaded Guns
Two new reviews posted at For Books’ Sake this week: Lyndall Gordon’s literary biography, Lives Like Loaded Guns – Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds, and Between Shades of Gray, a novel for young adults set in wartime Eastern Europe, by first-time author Ruta Sepetys.
18 Friday Feb 2011
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Alan Corkish, Alan Morrison, Anne Sexton, Brighton, Caroline Lucas, Cuts, Emergency Verse, George Orwell, Keith Armstrong, Mick Moss, Naomi Foyle, Niall McDevitt, Pen Kease, PJ Harvey, Poetry, Protest
The UK’s general election of May 2010 produced no overall majority, and for the first time since 1945, a coalition was formed by the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, with David Cameron and Nick Clegg taking the roles of Prime Minister and Deputy. Chancellor George Osborne swiftly proposed the most radical cuts to public services in a generation, in order to repay a national deficit estimated at £7.5 billion, and following the worldwide economic crisis that began in 2007.
Between the coalition’s Emergency Budget, and its Comprehensive Spending Review four months later, a palpable sense of unease brewed among many ordinary people. Autumn saw widespread student marches and occupations, while campaigning groups like UK Uncut staged ‘sit-ins’ at high street stores including Vodafone and Top Shop, in protest at corporate tax evasion.
During this period, the poet and editor, Alan Morrison, collected submissions for a new anthology, Emergency Verse: Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State. As reported in The Guardian, it was released initially as an E-book, and a print edition was subsequently launched at London’s Poetry Library in January 2011. Continue reading
07 Sunday Nov 2010
Posted in Books, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Writing
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Of the millions of words that have been devoted to Marilyn Monroe, few of them were written or said by the woman herself. Only a few interviews with Marilyn herself are still in print, and most of the people who knew her well are now gone.
A small handful of books can claim a direct connection to the star (My Story, an incomplete memoir from 1954; and a long interview, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words, unpublished until 1995.) Now, Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters can be added to the body of literature by Monroe.
The source material was provided by Anna Strasberg, widow of Lee Strasberg, who was Monroe’s acting coach and the main beneficiary of her will. Anna Strasberg is a shadowy figure among Monroe fans, who never knew the actress personally, and sold most of Marilyn’s possessions at auction in 1999.
Some may argue that Monroe’s legacy has been pillaged by bringing her most personal writings into the public domain. On the other hand, Marilyn’s life has been tabloid fodder for decades, long before Mrs Strasberg made her debut at Christie’s.
‘This book does not attempt to show her stripped bare,’ state editors Stanley Buchtal and Bernard Comment in their preface to Fragments, ‘but rather simply as she was.’ Apart from providing transcriptions of Marilyn’s handwriting, their presence is fairly unobtrusive. Continue reading
