Kaleidoscopic Omniscience by Will Alexander
“Vermillion shades of astral haunts abound as Alexander takes his readers through a psychedelic romp that leaves the consciousness reeling. There’s nothing usual about Alexander’s visionary take on history: the contemporary, the ancient, and the yet-to-be-possible-yet-possibly-not all come together simultaneously happening in the immediate now of his poems. Welcome to the sci-fi gothic splendor that is Alexander’s forte…”
Read the rest of Patrick James Dunagan’s Review here.
Stoning the Devil by Garry Craig Powell
“Garry Craig Powell’s Stoning The Devil interweaves narratives of sex, power and identity through a feminist lens, with all of the contradictions and myriad facets that perspective affords. This episodic novel—each chapter of which is complete unto itself—is first and foremost a work of lush and vivid prose. Various formal innovations, from the epistolary opening chapter to the syntactic feat of the chapter entitled “Sentence,” demonstrate Powell’s technical virtuosity. It’s this skill that allows him to capture the Gulf landscape’s severe beauty, alongside a wealthy city’s urban sheen and excess, with clarity that feels neither detached nor heavy-handed. While the Gulf in general, and the UAE in particular, almost function as their own characters in the book, it’s those souls who suffer and thrive in the foreground whom Powell trains his, and in turn the readers’, attention on. The characters which inhabit Stoning ’s pages are sensitively drawn and attuned readers will find themselves quickly invested in the lives of Badria, Fayruz, Alia and all the other “players” of this novel…”
Read the rest of Paula Mendoza’s Review here.
The Groundlings of Divine Will by Daniel Staniforth
“The groundlings stand in the pits facing the heavens, their apostolic gazes emboldening the players in their holy writs, clinging to their Divine Will and his sacred trinity of Seneca, Plutarch and Hollinshead, ingesting the pit-rolls and piss-ales of their transubstantiation. They speak out as ‘the human wick, the Temple candle, the alchymy of light’ against theological orthodoxies and their torturing and tortuous ways garnering their evidence and support from the Divine Will, the cauldrons of dark hags, Ralegh’s School of Night, Dr. John Dee, mystical and neo-Platonist writings. Written in period vernacular and ablaze with fire, the killing of heretics, sorcerers, witches, mediums and wizards, classical and mythological references, the Gods of love, which seep in and out of the plays, the book highlights the themes that would have been more pronounced in Shakespeare’s time. The groundlings, imbued with folklore and paganism, see what characters represent and hide, connect Hamlet with Dr. Dee, note the shadowy characters, enjoy Iago’s lies, Lear’s fool and Hamlet’s gravedigger and all the allegories…”
Read the rest of David Caddy’s Review here.
Suicide Bridge by Iain Sinclair
“I recall the excitement of first reading Suicide Bridge with its heady mixture of poetry and prose, text and counter text, scientific and literary quotation, cut-up’s and interwoven texts, beginning with the introductory statement ‘Intimate Associations: Myth and Place’. Man is rooted in Place but looks toward Myth for his living breath. Myth emerges as a weapon, a tool of resistance, echoing Robert Duncan. This was heightened open-field poetics applied to Albion, via William Blake’s Jerusalem, re-animating Blakean mythology through the low life of East London, with its sacrificial victims, and other occurrences…”
Read the rest of David Caddy’s Review here.
…And Egypt is the River by Michael S. Judge
“Michael S. Judge’s thoughtful and strange novel, … And Egypt Is The River, is similarly indebted in part to Charles Olson’s poetics in his fascination with etymology, and to quote from an interview, ‘the cartography of the attentions – personal, cultural, political, mythic, cosmological’. Egypt here is read as a state of being in a series of beguiling chapters that transmute the division between poetry and prose…”
Read the rest of David Caddy’s Review here.
Christ & Qabalah by Anthony Duncan with Gareth Knight
“Far from being an ordinary village or city Anglican vicar, the Rev. Duncan was also a mystic of great depth, a lover of faeries, a part-time ghost-buster, a natural psychic and a wonderful exponent of the esoteric truths behind Christianity. The Church of England occasionally throws up such a soul, but rarely do they flourish within and outside the bounds of the Church as Rev. Duncan did…”
Read the rest of Peregrin Wilkoak’s Review here.
Geordie’s War by Alan Richardson
“Alan Richardson, a contributor to the Inner Light Journal and biographer of Dion Fortune, has now obviously received a call to do his bit with this latest book. To my mind it is probably his best and certainly his most moving. As ‘Sting’ remarks in a foreword “Under the deceptively simple prose and conversational tone, Richardson crafts another level of insight which shows how the Somme Offensive resonated within his own soul a century later. Tensions were passed down from his war hero grandfather, through his father, and into his own childhood, thus family conflicts became almost analogues of the Great War itself. …The book is never less than informative, with unexpected insights. At times it is extremely funny…”
Read the rest of Gareth Knight’s article here.
All titles are available from various retail outlets such as Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or direct from the Skylight Press website.
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