 The Coffee House c/o Charnwood Arts Loughborough Library 31 Granby Street Loughborough LE11 3DU UK £2.50 Subscriptions: 2 issues £4.50; 4 issues £8.50 email Charnwood Arts visit Charnwood Arts' Website Before commenting on this review please read the FAQ page Home page Notes for publishers Want to be a reviewer? Anthologies. Books. Audio. Magazines. Software. Video. Artefacts. Web design by Gerald England This page last updated: 22nd December 2003. |
The Coffee House #6 | |
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THE COFFEE HOUSE describes itself as "a meeting place for the arts." Not all the arts are represented, of course, but its 48 pages are pretty well filled to the brim with poetry, prose and graphics. The three short stories all begin with sentences designed to make the reader ask (echoing the characters in EASTENDERS, who are always asking): "What's going on?" I particularly liked Mary Cooper's DOPPELGANGER, a clever variation on a well-known spooky theme. However, I do think that authors of stories and editors of magazines ought to know between them where commas are required and where they are not. Most of the pages are devoted to poetry, and they present a great variety of styles and subjects, by poets from the Charnwood area to the world. The poems are worthy, but overall I found the poetry a little too solid, with not enough sparkle. In spite of the variety, there is an awful lot about death and disease. Commitment and seriousness are excellent qualities in a poet, but not the only ones, I hope. Still, there is a strength to this magazine, and it gives the reader plenty to look at and think about, which is surely a mark of success. | ||
| reviewer: Andrew Belsey | ||
| The Coffee House #7 | ||
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What a delightful little collection Deborah TyIer-Bennett has achieved here, 40 pages of sensible and well constructed poems with some interesting line drawings by the editor herself, Kevin Ryan and Simon Davies and a few additional narrative pieces. This issue contains imaginative and competent poems by Ian Caws, Geoff Stevens, editor of Purple Patch and David Hill, editor of the Lyriklife pamphlets, among many others. Contributions from the Indian poet Divya Mather, USA's William Heyen and Aileen Kelly and John West from Australia give an international flavour. This particular issue contains a tribute by the editor to The American poet Anthony Piccione, who died last November in New York State aged 62. Anthony Piccione was a regular contributor to The Coffee House and his poetry, with its echoes of Robert Frost, gives a good idea of its content. This is perhaps best summed up in the Piccione's own words describing the process of creativity: imagination is just a remembering from the other side, of course.I liked too many of the poems to mention more than just a few: Mary Cooper's THE NAVVY, with its technical excellence and descriptive powers, is a good example from which to quote: His face; the face of Father Time, a well ploughed field, deeply furrowed. Like soft worn leather tanned by the sparkle of blue, His face; a creased and battered shoe.JOB DISSATISFACTION by A.K.Whitehead, contrasts working with wood to producing moulds using liquid iron and is another poem that appeals to me, as does the compassion in CHINESE MAN IN A BED by John West and VIEW by Neil Fulwood, a neat little vignette describing the effects of fog. There are several other poems worthy of mention, but why not get a copy yourself. To repeat myself — The Coffee House is a most delightful collection of prose and poetry. | ||
| reviewer: Ron Woollard | ||
| The Coffee House #9 | ||
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An unpretentious business-like clutch of about 40 poems of wide variety. In the words of the editor a bright patchwork of words containing something for all to enjoy.Old timers like R.L.Cook. William Oxley and Geoff Stevens mingle their work with those of other poets including Charnwood writers Robin Hamilton, Peter de Ville, Gillian Spraggs, and Mary Cooper. There are two humorously zippy cartoons from Alexey Talimonov, one with a figure sprawled on the sand heap in the bottom of an hour glass, hoping for a quiet sand-free read by stopping up the waist of the glass with an upraised finger. Gillian Bulstrode provides a spooky prose piece about an artist's painting which changes the position of its unfinished bare patch, unnerving the art curator, who has a car accident, when the painting reappears with himself painted into the patch as a crouching derelict. She also provides a sestina, PEOPLE WHO DON'T COME BACK, a difficult form if one obeys all the rules and still hopes for an effective three-line ending. With deviations (of no rhymes) from the two-rhyme rule and carrying the odd line of short foot length, the lyrical side is not helped, and construction is easier. However, it's an attractive effort, starting with People who don't come back are those who haunt Most frequently our locked and secret dreams, So we can never say with certainty That they are gone For we have lost them to all practical intent Yet they have never let us go.and ending But if we are not free to go, Locked into space left when they are gone, Then surely it is we who haunt.A reminder that we don't know very much about reality outside the 5-sense environment. Thankfully free of superfluous vulgarities, The Coffee House provides good refreshment with an international flavour via contributions from USA and Canada. | ||
| reviewer: Eric Ratcliffe |