Betrayal Laura Purcell

Betrayal Laura PurcellHistorical fiction centred on a headstrong working class girl in 18th century north Wales. Penniless Peggin is taken in and given work as a maid by the renowned Ladies of Llangollen, a real life lesbian couple moving in the literary circles of Byron and Wordsworth. But she is a difficult character and struggles to repay their kindness. Peggins brother Joe is driven and hard working, giving all his energies to the building of Thomas Telfords

In this disorientating landscape the skateboarder-poet is genius loci

whether he can follow the injunction:

But in the memory-dream

Stephen Watts begins a regular review of poetry in translation with Mahmoud Darwish’s Why Did you Leave the Horse alone

Peter Carpenter on Hannah Lowe

and a passionate expression of sympathy for his fellow prisoners

heartening and alarming in equal measure

in my native language: that never sounded safe or good or home

Marianne Munk

Her fourth novel

but are also healed by way of poetry

His most recent collections are The Odor of Sanctity (Salmon