Archives for Literature - Page 3
Poetry Corner: Water, Water Everywhere and A Load of Old Bull To Make You Thirsty Enough to Think
WILLIAM BULLIN When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman? When Eve named the flowers and Adam, the bears, Who got the bonuses and who sold the…
Poetry Corner: Has Tings!
JEMIA DE BLONDEVILLE Hastings has tings, oh yeah Cliff railways, a castle ruin, and plenty of sea air Great music, poetry, and a myriad of arts Lots of twittens, and…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW | Roof Less: The Housing Crisis in Words and Pictures
by Christopher HogginsIndependently published, rrp £15REVIEW BY TIM BARTON Four years ago, Chris, of Dweeblings fame, found himself facing homelessness. In his moving, and if you are a tenant yourself,…
Poetry Corner
Greenie BEN FAIRLIGHT As soon as we left it, the wild began. Our plough-shares cut the umbilical, Severed the song-lines, so the booming bane Of guilt summoned the gulls, their…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet
By Brett ChristophersPublished by Verso, rrp £22REVIEW BY TIM BARTON In his memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, author Bill Bryson waxes lyrical about the US consumer…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: What Will Survive of Us
By Howard JacobsonPublisher: Jonathan CapeREVIEW BY VIOLA VON HARRACH Muse for a moment on the title of Howard Jacobson’s latest novel, his 17th, What Will Survive of Us, and you…
Poetry Corner
falling PETE DONOHUE there’s a drone in my ear firing bullets at me if it does drop a bombshell i’ll die like a bee my legs in the air my…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Fighting for Life
By Isabel HardmanPublished by Penguin, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Edna Thomas gave birth to the first baby born under the aegis of the National Health Service, almost on the…
Poetry Corner: J.L.B
ANON (Inspired by article on John Logie Baird in HIP 234) Transmitting motion direct in another space in time. Magic man Barefoot inventor Denying physical needs in pursuit of miracles…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Fourteen Days
Edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas PrestonPublished by Chatto & WindusREVIEW BY VIOLA VON HARRACH Award winning author, Margaret Atwood, is the joint editor together with Douglas Preston of the…
POETRY CORNER: Castleham
DANNY GORING On telly they’re selling us holidays But we haven’t got enough cash The end of the month’s still a fortnight away And the thought brings us out in…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: One Fine Day
By Ian MarchantPublished by September Publishing, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Ian Marchant, a regular presenter on ‘Open Country’, Radio 4, and diarist for Church Times, is dying. Side by…
Poetry Corner: Eddie
BRIDGET GRIFFIN Tiles mosaic Stomach archaic Sprightly glistening territorial eyes A tongue that laps up. All the noise Very scaled. Many pigments of brown This artful dodger has a frown…
Poetry Corner: Nature’s Philosophy
VICTOR TIMMONS Nocturnal birds in sibilant causerie Forest creatures in distant revelry While nature's blanket dims their rivalry And stills the air to peaceful reverie How brief is this tranquillity…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Follow the Money
By Paul JohnsonPublished by Abacus, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON The subtitle of this book is ‘how much does Britain cost?’, cost being defined here by the balance of taxes…
Poetry Corner: New Year Sea Poem
TOM GRINDROD hear it hear it before you see it against the rain shoulders hunched blowing out turn the corner and there it is a great roiling wall of liquid…
The Stamp of Innocence
by Aled Gwyn JôbPublished by Troubadorrrp £ at Bookbusterreview by Tim Barton The 'Post Office scandal' has dominated the news for a few weeks now, yet it goes back a…
Poetry Corner: Haiku Sequence
JOHN R PARSONS riding networks of winter trees gibbous moon heads for the open after the tree surgeon I stack his sawn off limbs freak weather a bare cherry in…
Poetry Corner
Mask 2020 BEN FAIRLIGHT Swimming in a mid-September sea I dipped my head under, daringly, Then shook my chill-mangled mop like a dog To wring out London and its modern…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – Disconsolate Dreamers: On Pessimism and Utopia
Published by Zer0 Books, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON ‘Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’, said Romain Rolland, sadly remembered primarily for being a Stalinist. He used the…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – Palestinians and Israelis: A Short History of Conflict
Published by The History Press,rrp £ BY TIM BARTON In Deuteronomy, Chapter 31, Moses claims ‘the Lord’ promised a swath of land west of Jordan to the Israelites, saying ‘the…
Poetry Corner: War
PETER DALTON What does it mean, we are going to war Such a small word, such a monumental meaning Who is going to war though Those cowardly and fancy worded…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Occult & Uncanny Zines
Shuck; Undefined Boundary; Myth & Lore; Hellebore; Grimoire Silvanus; and moreat BOOKBUSTERREVIEW BY TIM BARTON Over the last couple of years, I have seen a boom in interest in the…
Poetry Corner: PUFFBALL CLOUDS
JEMMIA DE BLONDEVILLE Smoking smouldering chimneys Like old steam engines Seemingly chugging along Through the windswept, and whistling Squally, stormy skies Is it the trees brushing the clouds? Or have…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Weird Walk
By ‘Weird Walk’!Published by Watkins Books, 2023 rrp £ BY TIM BARTON The Weird Walk zine has been selling well at Bookbuster for a while now, and has reached issue…
Poetry Corner: To the thick of the forest
ROY DUFFIELD your black eyes and your ears that do not yield the right grain, they say are too poor to enter here, in this garden party debate, underfed by…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – All In: How we Build a Country that Works
By Lisa NandyPublished by Harper North, 2023 rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Lisa Nandy is stuck in a party that is losing public confidence fast, no one appears to like…
Poetry Corner: The Lips of the Sea
VERNON KEITH FOWLER The lips of the sea Slobber onto the beach And then suck back, Crashing and sucking, crashing and sucking. Each phase has its own sound Like breathing…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Ritual
Published by Weird Walk (in collaboration with StudioCanal & TSPTR)2023, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ If you’re a Wicker Man fan, you’ll love Ritual! From the offices…
Poetry Corner
APROPOS OF NOTHING FELICITY STEPHEN save the great Atlas cedar I walk past most days and Mr & Mrs Magpie hopping beneath a pooling of silvery sea a murmuration at…
HIP LOCAL BOOK REVIEW: The Invisible Women’s Club
By Helen ParisDoubleday, August 2023Hardback, pp336, £ BY VIOLA VON HARRACH If you are looking for a book to read this autumn then try local author, Helen Paris’s second novel,…
Poetry Corner: Nothing Happens!
JEMIA DE BLONDEVILLE On average I delete a minimum Of about 50 emails per day 350 per week About 1,500 per month 18,000 per year And approximately 200,000 per decade…
HIP LIT NEWS
Hastings Week Poetry Competition‘Hastings Women’ Theme It’s time to get writing for the annual Hastings Week Poetry Competition 2023, organised by Councillor James Bacon. This year, the theme is ‘Hastings…
SALTY DOGS
JOHN COLE on his new book Sea Dogs: Hastings Fishermen and Their Companions When I first began laying out the photos for the book Generations: Hastings Fishing Families, my wife…
Bookbuster Review: Leftfield Horror Film Fanzines
The Last Closet on The Left, vol 1Published by the Nottingham Horror Collective, 2023 rrp £ Came from The Closet Edited by Joe VallesePublished by Saraband, 2023 rrp £ BY…
Poetry Corner
There Is The Sea VERNON KEITH FOWLER There is the sea, the ever-changing sea, And there is the castle, standing on the hill. There is the sea, the sea which…
The pop-up Front Room
VICTORIA KINGHAM attends a Hastings Book Festival ‘pop-up’ event at Sugarpie Honeybun’s on London Road, St. Leonards, on Friday 11 August Thomas TruscottMichael McMillan with Tola Dabiri at Hastings Book…
The Festival that Keeps on Giving
NICK PELLING and HELEN MURPHY Wayne HerbertWayne Herbert, Festival organiser Some people don’t like book festivals: maybe they see them as chintzy affairs full of folding-chair types. Sort of a…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Shattered Nation
By Danny DorlingPublished by Verso Books, 2023 rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Halfway through this excellent outline of the decline of the UK, and dismantling of the post-war settlement and…
Poetry Corner
Climb Up JOHN R PARSON These fissured stones and rocks ground in support of our castle’s ageless weathered graffiti, in presence super imposed, moulded soft by light memories of long…