On Verse: Hipolito on Geoffrey Hill

ON VERSE

Jeffrey Hipolito on Geoffrey Hill’s Clavics

Hill is described as one of the most important poets of our age, without having founded a school or even influenced younger writers. He is hermetic in every sense of the word, and those who appreciate his Manichean, prophetic aesthetic will find in Clavics much of value, and many hard locks to pick.

Mark Noonan on Ben Mazer's A City of Angels 

The challenge for a verse play is to be vigorously two things at once, both poetry and drama. Somewhere, hopefully, the work finds a point where each aspect fuels and reinforces the other. At its most effective moments, Ben Mazer's new verse play achieves this elusive synergy.

ON FICTION

Matthew Duffus on Charles McLeod's American Weather

Avoiding simplistic solutions and a satisfying conclusion makes for a bleak read, and in its skewering of our consumer culture, American Weather fits most comfortably in the dark satiric tradition of Swift and Beckett, or more recently of Brett Easton Ellis.