Two of my poems published in Issue Nine of The Lonely Crowd (May 2018) came from my collection The Way Out launched in October 2018. ‘Paris, December 25th’ and ‘Mount Ainos’ are both poems about journeys. The entire collection is structured as a journey in three separate parts; In, Through and Out. The journey leads to an ending that is also a point of departure, encouraging the reader to determine their own direction on from the text.
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd pick their favourite books of the year. Cynan Jones It’s been a strange twelve months. I had a baby right at the start of it. That pretty much blew reading out of the water for most of the year. I was sent a lot of unbound proofs ahead of publication,…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd pick their favourite books of the year. Valerie Sirr One of the rewarding outcomes of subscribing to small publishers of books and magazines is the surprise packages that drop through your letterbox from time to time like unexpected gifts. Another source of books this year is an old bookshop with several…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd pick their favourite books of the year. Gerald Dawe With the volume of book publication hitting dizzying heights, matched by the promotional buzz of the market-place and sales via self-promotion, it sometimes feels that ‘literature’ has become just another product in the digital world of global media. Whatever is good for…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd pick their favourite books of the year. Jo Mazelis The intriguing title of Martina Evans’ Now We Can Talk Openly About Men is taken from a phrase that the author remembers was once spoken when a group of her female relatives were gathered together. All of the women that day…
Sophie Van Llewyn discusses her short story, ‘Dinner for Two’, taken from Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. At the time when I began writing ‘Dinner for Two,’ in the winter of 2017, I was, primarily, a flash fiction writer. I had a six-month-old baby, and I only had time to write when she was napping.…
Ellie Rees discusses her two poems in Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. What happens to a poem when you take it out of its context, when it loses the support of the poems that lead up to it, and the reflective glow of those that come after? In The Natural History of Selborne, first…
Paul Whyte discusses his short story, ‘Bottle Gardens’, featured in Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. I’ve lived with a relatively severe anxiety disorder for most of my life. It’s a part of who I am, and that’s ok, over the years I’ve come to accept it. Thankfully, I seem to be managing it pretty well…
When the editor, John Lavin, asked me to contribute a few words online to supplement poems of mine published in Issues 7 and 10 of The Lonely Crowd, two of which that are part of a long-term and on-going series, ‘tales sad, savidj and obscure’, I agreed to do so with mixed feelings, as I…
K. S. Moore discusses her three poems from Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. For me, going outdoors is often the start of an adventure in poetry. It’s that feeling of being in nature. Everyone and everything is highlighted against a background of animated, unspoiled colours. ‘Lost Summer’ began when I saw a neglected boat,…
In order to consider the germination of my story I’d like to refer to Dan Coxon’s online piece on this site On Writing ‘Sound of the Riverbed’, in which he assesses the worth of the adage, ‘Write what you know’. He concludes: Perhaps I was wrong to reject Mark Twain’s ‘Write what you know’. Perhaps…
Tracey Rhys discusses her poem ‘Telling Secrets to the Walls’, published in Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. The accompanying sketches are by the artist Pete Fowler. Last year, I was lucky enough to be chosen to participate in the Weird and Wonderful Wales project, a joint creative venture between Literature Wales, Cadw and the illustrator Pete…
Angela T. Carr reads three poems from Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd: ‘At the Heart of Every Stone a Bird’, ‘Angel’ & ‘Quadratic Love Song’. Angela T. Carr’s debut collection How To Lose Your Home & Save Your Life won the Cork Literary Review Poetry Manuscript Competition in 2013. Her work is published in journals in the UK, Ireland and the US, and has…
I began this story last October, on the day and date the story takes place, in the town in which the story takes place, sat in the passenger seat while my brother drove us home from our grandfather’s funeral. My girlfriend sat in the back, five months pregnant with our first child, and we listened…