Carol Farrelly reads from ‘Wolf in the Ultraviolet’, published in Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd. Carol Farrelly is a fiction writer, living in Scotland. She is the regional winner (Canada and Europe) of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her stories have been published in journals such as Granta, Irish Times, New Writing Scotland…
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Winter Readings: ‘A Conversation with Oma, 1968’ by Emma Venables
Our Winter Readings series continues with an extract from Emma Venables’ brilliant Issue Thirteen short story: ‘A Conversation with Oma, 1968’. Emma Venables is a writer and academic, currently residing in the North-West of England. Her short and flash fiction has been widely published in places such as Mslexia, The Lonely Crowd, Ellipsis Zine, and The Forge Literary Magazine. Her short story, ‘Woman at Gunpoint, 1945’, came runner-up (3rd) in the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize 2020. Her debut novel, Fragments of a Woman, will be published by Aderyn Press in June 2023. You can follow Emma on Twitter @EmmaMVenables
Winter Readings: ‘Connective Tissue’ by Jane Fraser
Watch Jane Fraser (Guest Fiction Editor of Issue Thirteen) read from the title story of her short story collection, Connective Tissue. You can purchase Issue Thirteen here and Connective Tissue here.
Winter Readings: ‘Human Soup’ by Madeleine D’Arcy
Madeleine D’Arcy reads from ‘Human Soup’, her short story in Issue Thirteen. Madeleine D’Arcy’s début short story collection, Waiting For The Bullet (Doire Press, 2014), won the Edge Hill Readers’ Choice Prize 2015 (UK). In 2010 she received the Hennessy Literary Award for First Fiction and the overall Hennessy Literary Award for New Irish Writer.…
Winter Readings: Two Triolets by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch reads her two triolets from Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd.
Winter Readings / ‘Philanthropy’ by Glyn Edwards, Jon Fowlds and Dan Trevithick
A film-poem based on a piece from Vertebrae, published by the Lonely Press.
Music by Jon Fowlds and Dan Trevithick.
Books of the Year 2022 / Part Two
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Part Three follows later this week. Livi Michael Manchester Uncanny is the fifth collection of short stories from master craftsman Nicholas Royle. As suggested by the title, all the stories are set in Manchester, although it is a Manchester made…
Natalie Ann Holborow reads ‘The Janitor is Crying in the Gents’
Natalie Ann Holborow reads one of two new poems featured in Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd. Find out how Natalie wrote the poem, here. Natalie Ann Holborow is the author of And Suddenly You Find Yourself and Small (Parthian) and co-author of The Wrong Side of the Looking Glass (Black Rabbit Press). She…
John Freeman reads from ‘Visions of Llandaff’
The Lonely Press is delighted to publish Visions of Llandaff, a stunning collaboration between poet John Freeman and photographer Chris Humphrey. Here, Freeman reads an extract from the volume. The above photograph is by Chris Humphrey and is taken from the book, which may be purchased here.
Read by the Author: ‘The Ladybirds’ by Katherine Duffy
Katherine Duffy reads The Ladybirds from Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd. Katherine Duffy lives in Ireland. Her poetry pamphlet Talking the Owl Away (Templar Poetry, 2018) received Templar’s Iota Shot Award. Two previous poetry collections were published by The Dedalus Press (Ireland). Her work was highly commended in the 2018 Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition. Recent poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Blue Nib, Skylight 47, Mediterranean Poetry, and in the anthologies The Word Ark (Dedalus Press, 2020) and Places of Poetry (Oneworld, 2020).
‘Dancing As Fast As I Can’ / Eleanor Hooker
Legion is a sequence of origin poems using the honeybee as a metaphor for the poet and a sting in childhood as the impetus to write. Michael Hartnett’s poem ‘A Necklace of Wrens’ is perhaps one of the best know origin poems by an Irish poet. The wrens settle on the young child in a feather necklet, marking him as a poet. This anointment caused the wrens to injure the young poet – Their talons left on me/scars not healed yet. Without subscribing to the notion of the tortured artist in this poem, Hartnett acknowledges, unsentimentally, that his craft arrived from an early wound. In his elegy to Yeats, ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’, Auden wrote Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry/ Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still. The idea of writing from a wound or a place of sorrow is not new and although disparaged as cliché, it resonates as a reality for many poets and writers, and to deny this fact is a form of silencing.‘Dancing as Fast as I Can’ is a poem that looks at the symbiotic relationship between the artist, their advocates and the ‘establishment’. It questions what these associations might entail for an artist and their artistic independence. The poem acknowledges that while most artists would like their work to be selected and advanced, not all are chosen, and perhaps a negative consequence of being absorbed into the hive is that the artist becomes managed, and looses their ability to produce beyond the constraints of that environment.
‘Protocol for a Window Visit’ / Katherine Duffy
Katherine Duffy reads ‘Protocol for a Window Visit’ from Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd, which may be purchased here. Katherine Duffy lives in Ireland. Her poetry pamphlet Talking the Owl Away (Templar Poetry, 2018) received Templar’s Iota Shot Award. Two previous poetry collections were published by The Dedalus Press (Ireland). Her work was…
Read by the Author: Two Bathsheba Poems by Tracey Rhys
Tracey Rhys reads two of her Bathsheba poems from Issue Twelve of The Lonely Crowd. The Lonely Crowd · Tracey Rhys reads ‘Bathsheba In Eden’ And ‘Bathsheba’ Tracey Rhys’ first pamphlet, Teaching a Bird to Sing (Green Bottle Press, 2016) was longlisted for the Michael Marks Award in 2017. Her poetry has been exhibited at The Senedd…
Winter Readings: ‘The Words He Said’ by Elizabeth Baines
Elizabeth Baines reads an extract from her short story, ‘The Words He Said’, published in Issue Twelve. See the site tomorrow for Elizabeth’s short essay on the composition of the story. The Lonely Crowd · Winter Readings ‘The Words He Said’ by Elizabeth Baines Image by Jo Mazelis.