Archives for Literature - Page 4
Poetry Corner
Alexandra Park Winter Sequence JOHN R PARSON . like each twig, blade and leaf in the park I enter morning sun cold day in the park plumes of smoke from…
Poetry Corner
The Artisan JEMIA DE BLONDEVILLE The fine end Of a needle That pierces through The soft fabric As it pulls the cotton through Marrying materials Often of a different hue…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Weaponising Anti-Semitism
By Asa WinstanleyPublished by O/R Books, 2023 rrp £15REVIEW BY GILL KNIGHT In this book, Asa Winstanley takes the reader on a meticulously researched 7-year journey to demonstrate how accusations…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Broadlake
By Ed BinghamPublished by Thinkwell Books 2023, £ BY KATY WEITZ First, full disclosure, I had never read a novel in rhyming prose before I picked up Broadlake, so I know practically…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
By Daron Acemoglu & Simon JohnsonPublished by Basic Books, 2023 rrp £25REVIEW BY PATRICK NOTHER On 19 May, on the doorstep of the premises of Alphabet / Google’s Deep Mind…
Book Festival Patrons Gather for Symposium
MERLIN BETTS Oli Spleen Or a soiree, a presentation, even just a poetry reading with Q+A to finish. On Wednesday June 14, Hastings Book Festival hosted its triumvirate of patrons…
HIP BOOK REVIEW
The SeasideEngland’s Love Affair By Madeleine BuntingPublished by Granta, May 2023Hardback RRP £, 400ppREVIEW BY VIOLA VON HARRACH In The Seaside, author and journalist Madeleine Bunting’s most incisive book to…
BBC author to share literary passion with Hastings Students
By Lucy Brown Iszi Lawrence has so many job titles it’s a struggle to list them all, but here are a few: writer, comedian, podcaster and History presenter with countless…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Chums
By Simon KuperPublished by Profile Books, 2023 rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Simon Kuper has a close relationship with his subject, as a former Oxford graduate, albeit, a ‘stain’ as…
HIP LIT NEWS: Graphic novel creators at Hastings Museum
Hastings based arts organisation MSL have a new event coming up on Thursday 8th June at Hastings Museum – a discussion with Scarlett and Sophie Rickard – the creators of…
The Hastings Book Fair Makes a Return
Following an absence of 4 years, the Hastings Book Fair is set to make its return over the spring bank holiday weekend on Sunday May ; For the first time,…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: The Cost of Living Crisis
By Costas Lapavitsas, James Meadway, & Doug NichollsPublished by Verso Books, 2023 rrp £ BY TIM BARTON In the most technical sense, we are not in a crisis, as the…
Poetry Corner
Cool Gang BEN FAIRLIGHT A surly gang of guys, well cool, Slinks along, hogs the prom – Seven youths with in-your-face faces Scuffing their trainers on the shingle spill. Inflated…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Rewilding the Sea
How to Save Our Oceans By Charles Clover REVIEW BY HATTIE ELLIS Charles Clover’s first book, The End of the Line (2004), revealed the catastrophic effects of overfishing and reached…
Poetry Corner
In Guestling Wood JOHN R PARSONS how many times this smuggled self has struck its shadowed way past coppices of dark chestnuts where slender stems of hazels sway or scattered…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: The Storm is Here: America on the Brink
By Luke MogelsonPublished by Partisan Books, 2022 rrp £25REVIEW BY KAY GREEN In The Storm is Here, US-born journalist Luke Mogelson starts out, surrounded by the heavily armed members of…
Poetry Corner
TWELVE WISHES REVEREND PHIL STREETER If a renegade Angel from heaven Waving a gnarled wand granted me three wishes, I would greedily beg a dozen. Present wishes being … Spending…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Tommy
By Nick LowlesPublished by Partisan Books,rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Recently, I reviewed The International Alt-Right, a book whose judgement when written seemed insufficiently pessimistic by the time publishing schedules…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Molly and the Captain
By Anthony QuinnAbacus books £ BY VIOLA VON HARRACH In his ninth novel, Anthony Quinn takes inspiration from the portraits painted by Thomas Gainsborough. The title, Molly and the Captain,…
HIP POETRY REVIEW: A Postcard from the Abyss
By Martin Appleby & Kris Garrattback room poetry, £5REVIEW BY PETE DONOHUE Hastings underground poet and DIY publisher Martin Appleby has featured several times in HIP Literature over the years.…
Lionel, the Watch and the Walk-in Wardrobe
by VIOLA VON HARRACH Ned Lawton’s debut novel is a murder mystery, a tale of lost causes, secret codes, and conspiracy theories, with a few untoward deaths along the way.…
Bookbuster Review: Electrify!
by TIM BARTONThere’s many a slip between a cup and a lip, indeed. Griffiths has subtitled his book ‘an optimist’s playbook for our clean energy future’. He is at pains…
People of Hastings and St Leonards: Penny Pepper
This week KATHRYN SUTTER met Penny Pepper, author, poet, and disability activist who has called St Leonards home for the past five years. Penny Pepper. Credit: JJ Waller. Like many…
Less is More
REVIEW BY RICHARD PRICE: part two of two In the first part of my review, I related how much of a revelation the book was for me, and in here…
Poetry corner: Old Roar Ghyll…haiku sequence
JOHN R PARSONS Old Roar Ghyllits ancient slabs still shedcreation’s trickle steep timber stepsrise and fall between gladeson the treacherous path clinging to vertical sidesold oaks convey networksof ivy into…
Poetry Corner: Letters
By John R Parsons lettersfrom people that I’ve never mettucked in books, I carry their contentsto bed with me, having found themon shelves in a bookcase where the corridorbends and…
Less is More: a Bookbuster Review
Published by Penguin, RRP £, available from Bookbuster, Queens Rd Review by Richard Price Part One of Two We are in a period of history where we need some optimism…
Peace, Passion and Poetry on Hastings MLK Day
By Merlin Betts “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.” Martin…
Poetry Corner: My Ship
JOHN R PARSONS My ship’swake flows back to that momentwhen anchor, first pulled with so little effort lay there on the deck waiting until some mooring was acknowledged as safe…
An Inconvenient Apocalypse
Bookbuster Review of the above title by Wes Jackson & Robert Jensenby. Published by Notre Dame Press, rrp £, available to order from Bookbuster, £20 each. Review by Tim Barton."...and…
BOOK REVIEW: The Long Covid Handbook
By Gez Medinger and Professor Danny Altman Published by Penguin, October 2022 Review by Viola von Harrach At last, a book that demystifies, that dispels the myths, offers practical advice and…
BOOK REVIEW: The Real Anthony Fauci
Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health By Robert Kennedy JrSkyhorse publishing Review by Robin Holtom At the beginning of the pandemic a friend…
The Poetic Image
Sarah Gomes Harris covered the Hastings Bookshop Poetry Festival for HIP earlier this autumn. Here are some of her sketches of those attending. I sketched poets sporadically between chunky intervals.…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
The International Alt-Right By Hermansson, Lawrence, Mulhall & Murdoch Published by Routledge, rrp £23, available to order from Bookbuster. REVIEW BY TIM BARTON In the last month two major reports…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Stolen By Grace Blakeley Published by Repeater Books, rrp £, available at Bookbuster Review by Tim Barton In relation to ‘rational policies’, as Liz Truss and her ideologically extremist cohort…
BOOK REVIEW
Secret Orbit By Ken Edwards Published by Grand Iota, paperback 254pp, £ Review by Pete Donohue St Leonards author Ken Edwards will have his fourth novel Secret Orbit published on…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Protest: Stories of ResistanceEdited by Ra PagePublished by Comma Press, at £ Street Spirit: the Power of Protest and MischiefBy Steve CrawshawPublished by LOM Art, rrp £, available at Bookbuster…
Your Writing Could be Published
Poems, stories and book reviews needed If you want to see your work published in these pages, here’s how. HIP Literature is always on the lookout for poems, short stories…
BOOKBUSTER ESSAY
On the Queen and Monarchy Essay by Tim Barton Milan Kundera said that ‘the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting’. Writing this month, Robin…
BOOK REVIEW
NO AGA SAGA SUSAN DESROSIERS says the debut novel, Of No Consequence, a tale of modern slavery set in the seamier sides of Hastings should be compulsory reading in secondary…