2013: Reads of the Year – Calum Rodger
Nathan Hamilton (ed.) Dear World & Everyone In It: New Poetry in the UK (2013, Bloodaxe) It’s probably true that the UK poetry world is richer, more varied and more vital than ever, which is… Continue reading
Nathan Hamilton (ed.) Dear World & Everyone In It: New Poetry in the UK (2013, Bloodaxe) It’s probably true that the UK poetry world is richer, more varied and more vital than ever, which is… Continue reading
Craig Dworkin No Medium (2013, MIT Press) A series of brilliant (re)readings of works blank, erased, clear or silent, from the fictional collection of poems at the start of Cocteau’s Orphée to artist Nick Thurston’s erased copy… Continue reading
The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich (2005, House of Anansi Press) This book of interviews radically extends the work Illich became famous for in the 1970s (Deschooling Society, Tools… Continue reading
Three American novels blew me away this year: A.M. Homes May We Be Forgiven (2013, Granta) A masterclass in form and technique, Homes’s novel has the driest narrative voice I’ve read in a while: deadpan,… Continue reading
Juliet Conlin The Fractured Man (Cargo, 2013) Brilliant plotting meets magnificent writing – The Fractured Man by Juliet Conlin is one of the most dazzling debuts of 2013. Written with elegant exuberance and completely absorbing,… Continue reading
Walter Benjamin Baudelaire. Edited by Giorgio Agamben, Barbara Chitussi et Clemens-Carl Härle, with an introduction by Giorgio Agamben (La Fabrique, 2013) Giorgio Agamben stumbled upon Benjamin’s lost manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France… Continue reading
Paula Meehan Dharmakaya (Carcarnet, 2000) Seeing Meehan read at the StAnza poetry festival in St Andrews in March prompted me to investigate her work in more detail; a picture of contemporary Irish writing is really… Continue reading