INTERVIEW: FIRE & DUST MEETS DAVE PITT
INTERVIEW: FIRE & DUST MEETS DAVE PITT “I dow see ya hair bab matted with all that womb gloop. Meybe I see long locks. Dark auburn with a shock of bright purple. at the front. “What ya think Grandad?” And we know it dow really matter what I or anyone else...
REVIEW: STEPHEN LIGHTBOWN’S ‘ONLY AIR’
Mirrors generally assume a standing observer – a situation that, if you’re not a wheelchair-user, is unlikely to have caused you serious grief. But returning home from hospital after a sledging accident that left him paraplegic at age sixteen, Stephen Lightbrown is confronted with a new reality […]
REVIEW: ANDREA MBARUSHIMANA’S V20 PAMPHLET
Andrea Mbarushimana’s new poetry pamphlet V20 – so titled because it won the 2019 Gloucester Poetry Society V20 competition – is a delicate Rosetta Stone, a key to unlocking the hieroglyphs of parallel narratives, and rendering them intelligible to we who live obliviously amongst them.
REVIEW: ANTONY OWEN’S ‘THE UNKNOWN CIVILIAN’
“My hardest battle is tending to a wound that keeps reappearing” writes Owen in the opening poem of his latest collection, The Unknown Civilian (KFS Press, 2020). The title of the poem provides a context (‘A Black Nurse Tends to Wounds’), but if you have followed Owen’s output over the last decade, you might imagine that he is referring to the task of writing about what has been his greatest preoccupation: human armed conflict and its many shadows.
Announcement: Contributors to The Classified Issue
In The Classified Issue (November 2019), “everyone” was… JEANNA ANDERSON – 'THOSE FILES ARE CLASSIFIED, MA'AM' Jeanna studied art and creative writing at William Woods University. She is best known for her poetry but is also branching out into the...
REVIEW: VOYAGE INTO COVENTRY’S TWIN CITY
By Prabhjot Kaur The Cov-Cork Poetry Exchange returned for its tenth year in August to celebrate the budding talent of its participating poets, a mutual heritage rich in poetry and arts, and the flourishing friendship between the twin cities. Coventry poets, Aysar Ghassan and our very own Raef Boylan, Lead Editor at HCE, travelled to Cork (Republic of Ireland) […]
INTERVIEW: FIRE & DUST MEETS LEANNE MODEN
Based in the East Midlands, Leanne Moden is a poet, performer and workshop leader. She competes in UK poetry slams and has been a national finalist at the Hammer and Tongue Slam, Poetry Rivals, the Camden Roundhouse Slam, and the Anti Slam. She has also competed at the BBC Edinburgh Fringe Slam and the Superheroes of Slam. Leanne performs her work at events across the UK and Europe […]
CLASSIFIED NON-FICTION: ‘Watergate Scandal and the Role of Journalism’ BY PATRICK HOLLIS
In August 1974, Richard Nixon made a decision which no President in Office had ever done before, and which no President has done since. He resigned. After two long years, the Watergate Scandal forced Nixon to essentially step down from his duties before he was forcefully removed in what was a definitive period in American politics. It began with a break-in at the Democratic Party Headquarters […]
CLASSIFIED FICTION: ‘THE PROBLEM WITH TIME’ BY KEITH BURDON
So, when I saw the advert, I couldn’t resist. It called out to me. I don’t even know why I was reading the newspaper. Like most local rags, it’s full of crushingly dull articles that would be of very limited interest to anyone other than those people about whom the article is written. […]
CLASSIFIED FICTION: ‘AFTER DINNER’ BY CAROL CAFFREY
At dinner that evening Rachel shimmered. Her satin dress seemed to flow over her in a river of gold, playing along her lightly-bronzed skin so that she and the dress became one. She had never […]