“Poetry produces many delights,” writes editor, John Gilham, in the foreword of the latest Dreamcatcher. And indeed, he’s right. This is a lively collection of poetry, fiction and artwork on the big themes of love, vengeance, nature, mystery, illness and death (among others!)
Poets who appear in issue 37 include Claire Booker, CM Buckland, Angela Cooke, Kieran Egan, Sally Festing, Daniel Gustaffson, Oz Hardwick, Tony McCabe, Mike McNamara, Ali Pardoe, Natalie Scott, Kenneth Durham Smith, Iain Twiddy, Tom Vaughan, Linda Lee Welch and Alice West.
The issue kicks off with a selection of poetry which featured at Poetry For All – an evening of work from poets living with hearing impairment, blindness or autism. Donna Williams’ work I admired in particular, especially her poem ‘These hands are bigger than the sky’. Diversity enrichens all our reading experience.
There are also short stories by Merryn Williams, Eleanor Porter, Alison Mordey, Stewart J Lowe, John Vale, Angelica Krikler and Gay McKenna among others.
Dreamcatcher reviews this issue include Paula McLain’s genre-bending book Flights of Fancy: Circling the Sun on women aviators; Pam Zinnemann-Hope’s first collection from Ward Wood Publishing; and Miller Oberman’s mixing of his own poetry with his translations of Old English poems, in his collection The Unstill Ones.
And what a lovely inter-weaving of featured artist Freya Horsely’s boldly impressionistic and colourfully dexterous work.
To purchase a copy of Dream Catcher Magazine (issue 37) or to find out how to submit your work, please visit: Dream Catcher and Stairwell Books
Featured artist Horace Panter’s brilliantly brash work blows right through the issue and is described by Art Editor Greg McGee as: “a pop art homage to what is a Kerouacian yearning to travel to altered states, to adventure, to expand horizons: to remaster, in a sense, the myth of The American Dream.”
Our Bonanza frolics took place in The Poetry Place – another great reason to support the Poetry Society. This bijou building (ok it’s cramped and steamy in summer but a refurb is on the way) is bang smack in the cultural heartland of London’s Covent Garden. Virtually every night there’s an event to enjoy or an exhibition to ponder. The Café provides tasty vegetarian food and a place to write or hang out in. Upstairs there’s a venue for workshops, parties and hard-working Poetry Society staff (also boxes and boxes of poetry books – the nicest possible kind of tripping hazard).
More than £16,000 is give out each year in prize money by the Poetry Society, which runs The National Poetry Competition, The Ted Hughes Award, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year, Slambassadors and numerous others.
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