Posts By: Will Harris
Review: ‘Us’ by Zaffar Kunial
The most impressive thing about Zaffar Kunial’s debut collection, Us, might be its willingness not to impress; to leave as slight an impression as possible. The book’s first epigraph (of two) comes from Khalil Gibran: ‘Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it / so that the other half may reach you’…
Will Harris
Review: ‘Fourth Person Singular’ by Nuar Alsadir
To fragment a text is to make it more object-like – gnomic, you could say, in the sense of knowing something that’s beyond both writer and reader, and so capable of being read back (more richly and ambiguously) into the world. For Nuar Alsadir, whose Fourth Person Singular is composed of fragments, sketches, and micro-essays,…
Will Harris
Review: ‘Long Pass’ by Joey Connolly
W.H. Auden said he would always ask two questions of new writing: firstly, “how does it work?” and secondly – “what kind of a guy [or woman or non-cis person] inhabits this poem?” These are questions which cut to the heart of what Joey Connolly does (and does so well) in his first collection, being…
Will Harris
‘I sing the praises of a fart’: On Keeping Our Wits
More than ever, we need to keep our wits about us. If our shared reality seems increasingly topsy turvy, our need for wit – as a way of seriously and playfully experimenting with language and digesting diverse experiences – must be at its greatest. It’s a subject we’ll be exploring closely on my upcoming online course, Keeping…
Will Harris
Review: ‘Speak from Here to There’ by Kwame Dawes & John Kinsella
‘We co-exist.’ Speak from Here to There (Peepal Tree Press) begins with this claim, followed by a description: The York gum bark is stripping itself off, shiny skin underneath exposed to the sun. Late summer – summers that won’t end – and it seems to be a statement, much more than restating a habit, a well-researched…
Will Harris