Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Wednesday 2 September 2015

"Structo 12", Euan Monaghan (ed), 2014

It's changed size since issue 9, though the content's style is broadly similar. This issue has a long interview with Margaret Atwood and some poems in translation (plus the original texts) as well as the usual poetry and prose (10 stories and an essay). About the magazine the editor writes -

  • "we are working with a new printer ... It's a place where the cleaners get paid the same hourly rate as the designers. Because of this they are more expensive to work with than our previous printers" (p.4)
  • "It's one of the reasons we are still a print magazine. It's wilfully anachronistic" (p.82)
  • "We publish about five percent of what we get" (p.87)

My favourite piece was "And Back Again", a story by Eley Williams that could be anthologised. Jen Calleja's "This Bull is a Bull" is based on an interesting premise but doesn't quite work for me. I like the idea of "Behold" by Megan Palmer, and its execution, though the plot meant that there were few surprises. I had more trouble with the poetry - even with the usually reliable A.E. Stallings. The Bios section is impressive enough for me to give the poets the benefit of the doubt.

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