Used Furniture Review

–Reviewed by Claire Trévien–

Online magazines seem to go one of two ways: either they emulate the print copy by having a PDF, (or at least separate section dedicated to a singular issue); or, they resemble blogs by having a rolling format. The former are generally more digestible and focused, they have unity, if not a theme – a concentrate of creativity. The latter have their own merits, but their leviathan format makes them harder to review. You have to follow the magazines for a longer breadth of time, building a picture of its quality and style from each link emitted from its facebook or twitter page.

Used Furniture Review is a new online magazine of literature and follows the second of these formats. The website is on the whole functional with headers leading to different sections (Poetry, Fiction, …) and includes some interesting features (‘Talking with Furniture’, interviews, reviews, columns, …). Used Furniture Review is an unusual choice of name, one whose origin is not explained. It appears to me to be a poetic comment on the palimpsest nature of all writing. The banner playfully refers to its title by means of a retro wallpaper pattern lending the website a homely understated charm. Although Used Furniture Review features a wide variety of writing, this review will only concentrate on poetry in the interest of sparing you a titanic of a read.

One distinct advantage of the format chosen by Used Furniture Review is its ability to showcase authors. The lack of spatial constraints means that we are confronted, in the poetry section, to an average of two to five poems per poet. The sampler of five poems by Karol Nielsen for instance means that you get an immediate sense of her interests in banality conflicted with death. The poems have in common her clipped dispassionate voice as she classifies various people:

‘I wrote about a divorced woman,
a gun to her head in Penn Station;
and a pretty college student—raped,
shot, stuffed in the trunk of her car.’

These samplers are like mini-collections within the webzine, allowing the writer to potentially acquire a readership. Most posts have comments suggesting that the magazine already has some faithful users, keen to join in the discussion – which is laudable. In another sense, however, the web format of the magazine is not exploited far enough, there is no direct link from the poem to Nielsen’s biography, one has to clunkily search for her in an entirely separate area if interested in her other work. It’s a wasted opportunity demonstrating that Used Furniture Review hasn’t fully grown into its own yet.

In terms of overarching style, the poems found on the website, as a whole, can be described as conversational, as is the case in Meg Pokrass’ ‘Grass Fed’:

‘I imagine you still feel bruised,
in that way that one can’t smile
all the way up, the cheeks want to,
but the chin rebels’

As with any style, some poets are more adept at it than others. Whereas someone like Mark Halliday can manage to sound casual whilst being deep, it is not a technique everyone can successfully emulate. There is music and purpose to Halliday, here the words seem casual because they are casual – they’re not pulling their weight, they’re just sitting there, hoping that if they wave violently enough no one will notice that they’re dead behind the eyes. If that sounds like a harsh verdict, it is one born out of frustration, because when Pokrass isn’t trying to be off-hand, it is apparent that she has a keen eye and the ability to conjure unusual visuals. Unfortunately, these are used so haphazardly that her talent doesn’t quite shine through.

Another theme that emerges, most apparent in Cassie Manne’s poetry, is a taste for shock value. There is of course her ‘Poem for a Pedophile [sic]’, a combination of pat rhymes, salacious images and a moralizing ending. In her poem ‘Catholic Upbringing’ she can’t resist, of course, linking religion to sex, but it’s perhaps more disappointing to encounter in the otherwise promising ‘Flood Season’ this particular line: ‘The house falls asleep to masturbating crickets’. Put together, these three poems feel immature and cheap. Yet, ‘Flood Season’, by far the strongest of her three poems, shows a real talent for story-telling and atmosphere-conjuring. In the poem, Manne shows herself capable of depicting delicious sensory explorations:

‘This is July.
Mosquitos attracted to the sweet smell of freckled arms. Calamine lotion
has not yet been invented. It will be the third day of rain;
bodies rush through towns like bloated floaters in the pool.
Couples linger under sheets and sweat.
It bakes their worn ankles and thundered thighs.’

A third theme I should like to briefly draw on is the appearance of tattoos in three of the poems:

‘Permanent tattoos of
“Our Father”’

(‘Catholic Upbringing’, Cassie Manne)

‘I bear these stories like a life sentence,
their grief indelible, like a prison tattoo.’

(‘Life Sentence’, Karol Nielsen)

‘And climb into the blinding light
Of a sky tattooed with lightning’

(‘Through the Pane’, Liz Masi)

Poetry Tattoos appear to be all the rage of late, so perhaps it is not so surprising to see that the love is reciprocated. These three poets appear relatively close after one another, so this can’t be a coincidence, surely? Are they set to become the new cliché? They certainly attempt to inflict some street cred into otherwise innocuous poems.

Liz Masi, whose use of the word tattoo is the most evocative, is one of the better poets to be found on the website. She uses refreshing specificity in ‘The Piano Bench’ for instance, and is capable of more disturbing tableaux too, as in her poem ‘Ribcage’:

‘I realized that my ribcage was a lead-heavy carcass
Hanging like a skeleton from my phony grin.’

But the faux-naïve voice she employs gets jarring after three poems – so that the showcase here is a disadvantage that lays bare her current limitations.

Whilst no poems on Used Furniture Review are appalling, none are outstanding either. There is no doubt, however, that its authors have the potential to develop; and that the magazine, still in its early stages, will attract a higher level of submissions in time. The hardest stage is done: they have a dedicated readership, a website that is fully integrated with other social media, the rest will surely follow.

Speed Dating Two Literary Magazines: A Cappella Zoo #5 & Willow Springs #66

-Reviewed by Claire Trevien–

You might remember the Sabotage review ‘Speed Dating Four Poetry Pamphlets’ – it’s now time to give two poetry and fiction magazines the same treatment! As before, I will be superficially judging the ‘candidates’ on their value for money and give you a quick trip inside their brain.

Who?

• A Cappella Zoo #5
• Willow Springs #66

So in other words: a veteran versus a newbie. Willow Springs is a bi-yearly print journal that has been going since 1977. A Cappella Zoo is a bi-yearly web and print journal since autumn 2008.

In its 30+ years, Willow Springs has published some impressive names, such as Jorge Luis Borges, WS Merwin, Charles Bukowski, and Sabotage favourite, Mark Halliday.

As a newer arrival, A Cappella Zoo concentrates on magic realism and slipstream styles of writing ‘from around the world’.  It prints its issues first then gradually releases the material online.

Both magazines are based in the United States.

How Much?

A Cappella Zoo #5 boasts 15 stories, 14 poems, 2 artists and 5 countries for $4

Willow Springs #66 boasts 18 poems, 3 fiction stories, 1 non-fiction story and an interview for $10

What?

First: I must mention a subject that recurred in both magazines often enough that it bears mentioning: birds. Birds of all types, sometimes metaphorical, were a key theme; maybe avian flu was to blame? I don’t mind winged creatures but after one too many mention of flying the nest I was harking after a good canine tale.

In light of (fairly) recent complaints that not enough women are published in literary magazines I was also heartened to find this was quite the reverse in these US publications, with a majority of female writers in Willow Springs #66 and an equal split in A Cappella Zoo #5.

Willow Springs #66 Highlights:

Katie Cortese ‘International Cooking for Beginners’ gets first prize: a captivating yet frustrating tale of stigmatization, prejudices and fantasies. It is frustrating because of the non-dits that it peppers throughout the tale like brief peeks through venetian blinds. What Cortese is best at is sketching small-minded individuals encountering alien experiences, but without reducing them to buffoons.

Finding a stand-out for the poetry was a harder task as I was drawn to several poems, all very different from each other with their own defects and qualities. It seems fair to call out Kathleen Flenniken’s ‘A Great Physicist Recalls the Manhattan Project’. The poem deals with John A. Wheeler’s life, a man I know nothing about save what the poem tells me, which is quite sufficient. It is both personal and impersonal, blending tender observations with scientific matter of factness:

‘I watched my youngest climb as the sun blazed behind her golden hair

and realized that halos were not a painter’s invention

but a consequence of nature. Have you ever held plutonium in your hand?’

Another stand-out is Albert Garcia’s poem ‘Dig’. Narrated by a ten year old boy who happens on the grave of an Indian child, this moment of reckoning escapes the pitfalls of twee with its sober descriptions. The ending in particular, of the father shoveling earth back on the bones, ‘the sounds / of a straining body, of breathing’, is masterful.

There are no bad pieces as such in this magazine’s issue, but nor is there really any genius. Even the stand-outs that I’ve mentioned lack that certain oomph, that certain kick that makes you tingle all over. Willow Springs #66 plays it too safe for my liking, but at the same time, it’s satisfying to read works knowing you won’t cut yourself.

A Cappella Zoo #5:

Amongst the short stories ‘Birds Every Child Should Know’ by Kate Riedel stands out. It doesn’t suffer, like many other works in this magazine do, of the clipped-sentence syndrome, a tiresome technique used in an effort to heighten mystery. It is attempted by many but only mastered by a few. This story manages the right balance of information and wonder, and twists your heart in a knot in the process.

A poetry highlight is Lisa Grove’s ‘The Cat and the Fiddle’. Sensuous, deliciously crafted, it manages to pull together in a few lines a heavy mix of images: sex, dishwashing, car crashes, eating, a meditation on the future, under the arc of hey diddle diddle, without feeling contrived:

‘Our blood may ooze

over the plate of pavement like syrup spilling down

pancakes, without the time to even regret not licking

the sweet maple of our skin’

Other stand-outs are Anna Jaquiery’s ‘Fragmentation’, a mosaic of a poem that tries to pin the unpinnable, and Nancy Gold’s ‘Showtime’, a tale of freakshows, with a character worthy of a Victor Hugo novel, and a touch of Icarus.

A Cappella Zoo’s authors do not lack imagination, but it is the execution that lets several pieces down: underworked, under-thought, buried under too many contrivances to let their worth shine through. The poetry in particular suffers, struggling to manage that magic blend of clarity, ambiguity and storytelling it aims for.

In Conclusion

I wasn’t bowled over by either magazine, though both had their highlights. Willow Springs #66, the good looking elderly gentleman, seduced me first with its old school ways and reliably good poems. The cover and paper are of a superior quality too. However, A Cappella Zoo #5, like an eccentric sailor, has been craftily winning me over with its rich tales. The quality is more variable in A Cappella Zoo #5 but the imagination on display is intriguing enough to make the stories and poems that do work, shine brighter.

End of Year Round-Up: The Reviewers

2010 was the year Sabotage went from being just a thought to a fully-fledged website. To celebrate not just the wonderful reviewers who are the backbone of this site, but also the literature that has made our year what it is, I have asked several reviewers to answer these three short questions:

-Has 2010 brought to your attention any outstanding literary magazines (be they online or in print), if so, which?

-What event sticks out in your mind as the literary event of 2010 (it can be a personal accomplishment)?

-What was your favourite literary discovery of the year (it can be a single poem, a novel, a pamphlet, a press, …)?

Below you will find the answers of several of this year’s reviewers, and in a few days I will publish the answers of several authors, both of poetry and fiction, who were kind enough to take part.

To make things fair, here are my brief answers, then I’ll hand it over to the reviewers:

-Obviously the creation of Sabotage has brought my attention to several excellent magazines. My favourite discovery is probably Diagram. I reviewed its Summer 2010 issue for The Review Review. It was a bit of a surprise favourite as I tend to prefer poetry to short stories. This is what I said about it in the review: ‘The fiction featured displays an obsessive relationship to dissection and decorticates genres, voices, people. Sometimes this mad-scientist effervescence overwhelms the content to the point of un-readability, but more often than not, it elates. Diagram is a welcome shock-therapy to more traditional online journals – a breath of unruly air displacing paperwork.’

-There are several events that I could cite, 2010 brought the death of two personal heavyweight: Edwin Morgan and J.D. Salinger. Though with the latter, I could not help but feel a certain morbid curiosity for the work he kept hidden, as if he were the guardian of a treasure and finally defeated by a cocky young hero who knew the answers to the riddle. On a personal level, it was getting two poems accepted by Poetry Salzburg Review, a magazine I have long admired for the consistent quality of its output, and its vibrantly multi-cultural authors.

-Now that’s definitely a tough one. I discovered James Merrill’s ‘Charles on Fire’ and Charles Causley’s ‘Convoy’ thanks to Katy Evans-Bush’s workshop Making Poetry at the Poetry School, both have stuck with me for days beyond reading. Amongst pamphlets, my favourites were Mark Halliday’s No panic here, Jon Stone’s Scarecrows and Joe Dunthorne’s Faber New Poets pamphlet. As far as collections go two stand out: Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard and Karen Annesen’s How to Fall.

The Reviewers (in no particular order):

Richard T. Watson is a writer and director who has reviewed several works for Sabotage, most recently two of Sidekick Books’ publications, Pocket Spellbook and Coin Opera. You can find his review here, and his blog here.

-Its focal hero might make it seem a tad outdated, but I’ve enjoyed the Ben Jonson Journal (which I discovered in 2010, but has been running for much longer). It’s one of the many things I came across as a student that I wanted to get into in more depth, but never had time because of the looming deadline thing. But what I did read of the BJJ helped with my Dissertation, and all of it was fascinating.

-It’s not that long since National Poetry Week, which included a BBC adaptation of Chris Reid’s poem The Song of Lunch on BBC Two – which I think is probably my literary event of the year (and not just for the connection to my own University). The poem was translated more or less directly to the screen without addition or abridgement, a rare case of bringing poetry to mainstream popular culture. Having Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson involved helps as well.

–My favourite literary discovery of 2010 is Julia Bird’s poem ‘For my Brother, Relentlessly’, which is published in Coin Opera, a micro-anthology from Sidekick Books. It’s a poem in nostalgic praise of  arcade game classic Space Invaders, laid out like the screen of a Space Invaders game. The text itself is simply the repeated question ‘Can I have a go on the Space Invaders now?’ – but what I especially like is the way that the title’s comma conjures an image of a small girl asking this of her brother without pausing for breath for several minutes. Then, when she does finally take a breath, she says ‘please’.

Juliet Wilson is a poet who has written a series of reviews on environmental literary magazines for Sabotage, her most recent review can be found here whilst her website is here.

-2010 was the year I really became aware of Anon Poetry magazine. I knew it existed and had read an old copy but this year they accepted two of my poems and I found myself at the wonderful launch party at the Scottish Poetry Library and bought more back copies. The current editor Colin Fraser really knows how to choose good poetry (not just because he chooses mine!) and there are also a selection of intelligent and thought provoking articles about poetry in the magazine. Add to this that its a lovely neat format and fits quite easily into a handbag or pocket for reading on the bus, definitely a great read. The anon website is here and they’re on Twitter too:

-The event that for me was the literary event of 2010 was (sorry to blow my own trumpet!) the launch of my poetry chapbook Unthinkable Skies by Calder Wood Press.

-My favourite literary discovery was Lorsque j’etais un oeuvre d’art by Eric Emanuel Schmitt, an amazing, weird and wonderful novel about a man who is saved from committing suicide by an art entrepreneur who offers him the chance to become a living piece of art. A thought provoking exploration of what it means to be human written with the narrative drive of a thriller. I don’t know whether it’s been translated into English. I always find that reading an exceptionally good book in a foreign language intensifies the experience for me, as I meed to concentrate more and there’s a real sense of achievement in the reading!

Ian Chung is a poet who blogs here and tweets here. His most recent review for Sabotage is of the arts-collective website Lazy Gramophone.

-Polarity Magazine comes to mind. I came to it quite by chance, as the chief editor happens to teach on my university course as well and there was a launch event held at the university. It’s a print magazine, very professionally done, with each issue being ‘organised around two falsely polarised concepts’. The magazine’s website has some excerpts from the first issue.
-I’m going to go with a personal accomplishment here, and that was getting a couple of my poems accepted by The Cadaverine. It was my third time submitting, so I guess it’s true, third time’s the charm! Seriously though, it was an honour for my work to be chosen, and I’m looking forward to seeing it appear on the newly revamped website.

-I’m going to say it was Tom McCarthy’s Remainder. In a seminar last year, I’d read the Zadie Smith essay, ‘Two Paths for the Novel’, in which she reviews Remainder and Joseph O’Neill’sNetherland, and was intrigued by how she saw them as representing opposing futures for the Anglophone novel. I’d meant to read Remainder since then, but only got around to doing so over the summer holidays. It’s definitely an interesting read, in the way that its protagonist escalates the cycles of repetition that are the only means by which his life can anchor itself meaningfully. Smith notes at the start of her essay that Remainder took seven years to find a publisher, which isn’t surprising, given how its structure deliberately defies the sort of marketable narrative that would sit nicely in a chain bookstore’s window display.

Caroline Crew is a poet and a prolific blogger of all things poetic here.  She reviewed Blue-eyed boy bait for Sabotage here.

-For me the publications that have really sung that this year have all had a really strong sense of identity and of purpose. Literary magazines and projects that eshcew the normal manifestos on the submissions page. The ones that have really struck me this year have been Fuselit– a gorgeous magazine that runs of a spur word. Popshot, the illustrated poetry magazine that brings together the visual and the verbal to stunning effect, and my current favourite, > kill author, an online magazine that helped me rid myself of the silly preconception that print is inherently better.

-Sadly, for me that would have to be the passing of Edwin Morgan, at the grand age of 90. He was the first Scots Makar, and when it comes down to it, just a absolutely stellar poet. The death of such an imagination leaves an abyss.
-Well, moving across the Atlantic has been strange for me in many ways, but the epic differences in the poetry being written was definitely the most astounding. My favourite discovery so far would have to be Ada Limon. I saw her read recently and bought her excellent collection, sharks in the rivers, and cannot let it be out of my reach.

Jared Randall is a poet who blogs here, his first book of poetry, Aprocryphal Road Code, is now available from Salt Publishing. He reviewed >kill author for Sabotage here.

–The Offending Adam is probably the most intriguing online lit mag to catch my eye this year. TOA has taken the online lit mag format and run with it. Editors Andrew Wessels and Co. present weekly features that you can read in a relatively few spare moments because they focus on (usually) a single poet’s work. This focused brevity includes a brief statement from the author or a third party about what they think of the work and how it has come into existence. What is more, TOA takes care to ensure this glimpse behind the scenes/recommendation lends a sense of literary justification and thoughtfulness without descending into either facile interpretism or the chance to merely sound off on one’s poetic opinions.

Rather than browsing for a mag’s hidden gems among a multitude of works that may serve as mere fodder, every entry of TOA leaves me excited for next week’s installment. TOA’s eye for quality and the breathing space they leave to really consider the work at hand fly in the face of the common “dime-a-dozen” argument against online literature journals. You can sign up for weekly updates via email or Facebook and always know that your next poetry fix is in the wings and that you won’t have to wade through scads of authors to get to something you’ll truly want to consider.

-I don’t know that I’m qualified to give a grand literary pronouncement of what event was most important on a grand scale, but I did experience a very personal circle of memorable events at the end of 2010. The circle involves the publication of my own first book of poetry (Apocryphal Road Code) but really centers on the National Book Award in fiction as won by my former Western Michigan University undergrad professor, Jaimy Gordon.

The background of this story goes back a decade. Jaimy’s was my final fiction workshop before I dropped out of school for nearly four years after ignoring her advice to stick with it (no exaggeration). Of course, she was right, and, in 2004, I went back to school, finished up my degree, and from there received my MFA at the University of Notre Dame. How ironic that, barely a week after my first book came out, I was privileged to hear Jaimy read from her award-winning Lord of Misrule at the Kalamazoo Public Library.

This event, with its local southwest-Michigan flavor, was a culmination for me. I reflected, while waiting in line to have Jaimy sign my copy of her book, on the good fortune I had to study with great writers in the Kalamazoo area while in undergrad. I realized, after Jaimy spoke on the importance for her of finding a character’s voice, how I, too, learned the importance of voice from her all those years ago. Voice is important in my recent book, and I knew in that moment that I owe Jaimy more than I had either suspected or remembered.

Though it comes from a true prodigal, I believe I can safely say that all of us who have studied with Jaimy know how good she is, how careful and precise and insightful are her critiques. I could not be happier on her behalf for the recognition she has received, and I can only hope to enjoy a touch of the same in the future. Also, if you have not picked up a copy of Lord of Misrule, do so. A great book to curl up with over the holidays!

-I did not have to think long in order to settle on Chad Sweeney’s Parable of Hide and Seek from Alice James Books. Chad is a writer who is also local to a Kalamazoo area rich in talent, and I fell in love with his new poetry during a reading he gave recently. In particular, his poems “Little Wet Monster” and “Holy Holy” struck such a personal chord with me that I had to acquire his book right away.

The first is an incantation, a welcoming, a calling forth of an unborn child: “Come antler through the gates my thingling/ Your grapes contain the houses// Unmask the stones my darkling grief/ Come whole my homeward early// You alone devour the night,” and so on. The child comes from the dark womb but brings the secret of light, a rich paradox among many in Parable. Mother and father voices merge somehow in a poem that Chad reads with a lot of courage and all the real passion of a father who appreciates the mystery and precious gift that is life. I jive with that, being a father of four with another on the way.

In “Holy Holy,” Chad also manages to get me where I feel it deep down. It begins, “For me speech is/ a way of touching,/ a rummaging under/ for what’s not meant// to be moved,” and continues, “a sentence begun// before my father was/ beaten for his stutter.” I adore the double to triple meanings of these enjambed lines as they turn on one another. The poet then asks for “courage/ to fail publicly// in ordinary tasks,/ give/ me corner beams laboring/ without grace.”

The humility and gentle sensibility of Chad Sweeney’s poems are, judging by his reading and conversation, wholly genuine. Their surreal yet familiar landscapes pull me in, and I think they will you, too. Give him a try at http://www.alicejamesbooks.org or your favorite seller. In fact, treat yourself to an entire Kalamazoo, Michigan, literary romp! There are plenty of authors to choose from, whether recently published or from years gone by.

Mark Halliday – No Panic Here

-Reviewed by Claire Trévien–

Mark Halliday’s pamphlet ‘No panic here’ is one of those deceptively simple works. Halliday lures the reader in with his ‘ultra-talk’ – which I’d define, judging by this pamphlet, as colloquial poems that often function as dramatic-monologues. They are ‘theatrical’ in a large sense: the wings have been drawn back, you can see the plaster peeling, wires are hanging in a disordered fashion, but these only enhance the performance of the lone actor. These frailties, the less than perfect structure, make the poems all the more gut-wrenching.

The Cover of Mark Halliday’s ‘No Panic Here’ (Happenstance Press)

An example, ‘Sad News’, in which the title of the pamphlet appears, depicts a narrator attempting to handle the death of a friend’s wife. At the same time as he processes this information, the narrator desperately tries to keep a handle on how this reflects on the mortality of his own wife:

‘His wife just died. Died. Okay but that’s his
Wife. His wife. Not my wife. So that’s why it’s all right’

Even in such a short excerpt (the opening lines) it should be clear that this is a very performable poem, hence my portmanteau use of ‘theatrical’. The rest of the poem builds as the narrator grows increasingly distressed and captures the quick flits of the mind as it jumps through possibilities utterly convincingly.

If you have good eyesight you might be able to read ‘Sad News’

What makes the piece surprisingly moving though, is the protagonist’s utter selfishness. His immediate reaction to the news is not to think of his friend’s state, or rather, it is to think of his friend’s state but appropriate it and empathize to the extent that he is forced to grasp his material possessions to steady his emotions:

‘The Georgia Review — a coffee mug from Tennessee—
all this stuff I love. Which
would be insane if it all could utterly—’

These are the reactions you try to hide when big things happen, lumped together in the bag of other inappropriate behavior: hysterical laughter at a funeral, relief when none of your loved ones are hurt in a catastrophe and other unfortunate demonstrations of survival instincts. The use of the first person narrative here is particularly effective in preventing the poem from slipping into a preachy mode. Instead, what we have are flaws laid bare and basking in self-deprecation.

Indeed, dancing over the poem is Halliday’s special formula of gentle mocking. The title, ‘Sad News’, undermines the narrator’s self-pitying, the way the kitchen is put on a pedestal is cause for derision, but at the same time there is a sense that Halliday sympathizes with the puppet he’s created.

This mixture of satire and heart is replicated throughout the pamphlet with different dosages. The poem ‘Numerous Swans’, for instance, opts for a self-aware undercutting of a description of swans:

‘they are my thoughts if you hadn’t twigged to that already,’

Whilst in ‘Full-blown Maturity’ the protagonist declares:

‘Now I shall write a brave poem about turning 55’

In the poem, he self-edits as he goes, leaving in full view all of his failings and insecurities (‘Avoid references to fire, and to breasts’) so that the mixture in this case is funny, absurd, and as with some many of his poems, easy to relate to.

This ‘accessibility’  might keep this pamphlet from the accolades it deserves and this is a shame as this simplicity is Halliday’s greatest illusion. The considerable effort necessary to craft these poems is akin to a swan’s frantic paddling underwater: as an outsider, you can only observe the smooth glide.

This is Halliday’s debut pamphlet in the UK (despite having several collections under his belt in the US) and I rather hope it is not the last.

As I’ve mentioned, I picked this pamphlet up in the Happenstance Press’ Lucky Dip, but it is also on sale individually for a mere £4.

p.s For more on ultra-talk and Mark Halliday, check out this very interesting article by David Graham.

Happenstance’s Lucky Dip

I won’t be satisfied until the three columns of this new blog are full, and I fully intend to review the wonderful pamphlet ‘No Panic Here’ by Mark Halliday but, as I am in a rush, I will in the meantime advertise the means through which I acquired it.

Happenstance Press has had the brilliant idea to advertise a Lucky Dip section in its online shop. For £7 you get three random pamphlets, pamphlets you might not have otherwise picked (though at £4 each you’d be mad not to).

Lucky Dip

The pamphlets are almost pocket sized, with brightly coloured covers, and of course, staples. I doubt I would have encountered Mark Halliday’s pamphlet otherwise (I might have, but it would have taken longer) and I’m really glad I did, it’s been a while since I’ve had a coup de foudre with any collection. But more on that in a couple of days…

Why are you still here?