Cultured Llama

Rebecca Gethin reviews two Cultured Llama poets’ performances at Exeter Uncut. Richard Thomas and Rose Cook appeared in a Cultured Llama double bill, and Gethin writes

[Richard’s] poems seem to start in the very ordinary (nappies, for example!) but then spun out into the unworldly and surreal with often lyrical imagery dovetailed neatly into the conversational-sounding lines. His reading style is also unusual and mesmerising.

Rose started by saying how happy it made her that people were so ready to spend an evening with poetry and I thought this very touching … Rose’s website is full of lovely things.

Richard Thomas and Rose Cook both appear as featured writers on Rebecca Gethin’s website.

Click on the book title to go to the books’ pages and purchase The Strangest Thankyou by Richard Thomas and Notes From a Bright Field by Rose Cook.  £8 each plus p&p.

As Long as it Takes by Maria C McCarthy is reviewed by Pauline Masurel for The Short Review. Masurel writes:

These stories feature a cast of characters from an extended family which overlap to form a collage of lives that relate to each other while every story works individually as a distinct whole.  They shine a light into the commonplace of families and friends, but also the more extraordinary corners of human experience, such as a homeless man who acts as a catalyst for Love in the story of the same name.  And in More Katherine Than Audrey, a story about Noreen, who was confined in a mental hospital for being a typhoid carrier.

In other stories, it is the objects featured in them which act as totems for all sorts of emotions. A mirror, a christening gown, a comb, a child’s tea-set or a set of Russian dolls: these things can be enough to set off a whole story. In fact, As Long as it Takes is a bit like a nest of Russian dolls, with one woman packed inside another woman, each helping to contain or release or the other.

Read the full review at The Short Review. 

Click on the book title to go to the book’s pages and purchase As Long as it Takes for £10 plus p&p.

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