My choice cuts from Edinburgh Fringe

Just back from Edinburgh, where I saw 20 shows in 5 days. OK, 19. We were 2 minutes late for one, and missed out. Two of the shows were at the Book Festival, one at the International Festival, and the rest on the Fringe. I also gave a reading at the Fruitmarket Gallery with someContinue reading “My choice cuts from Edinburgh Fringe”

This is not a sales pitch

This is not a sales pitch. This is a confession. But this is not a confessional: I have nothing to be ashamed of. In May Test Centre will release my second collection of poems. It’s been six years since I published How to Build a City. It is an understatement to say that I haveContinue reading “This is not a sales pitch”

Two early reviews of Flood Drain

Chivers’ Flood Drain speaks in many voices: some are beautiful, some are demotic and, pulled together, they achieve a confluence, like the Humber and the Hull, like the past and the present. John Field, ‘Find the River’ and Very different from the ambitious Medieval allegorical world of Langland’s dream poem this witty and intelligent take onContinue reading “Two early reviews of Flood Drain”

Mutant River: Messing around on the Hull

In the opening of the great medieval dream vision Piers Plowman, the narrator lies down ‘on a brood bank by a bourne syde’ and is sent to sleep by the sound of the stream which, as he says ‘sweyed so murye’. The poem registers a universal truth, that there is something mesmeric about running water,Continue reading “Mutant River: Messing around on the Hull”

Flood Drain

I couldn’t be more excited to have been commissioned by Humber Mouth Literature Festival to write Flood Drain. ~ Flood Drain: A Contemporary Dream Vision of the River Hull Inspired by the extraordinary dream visions of the medieval poets, the contemporary writer Tom Chivers proposes a new exploration of the liminal terrain of the RiverContinue reading “Flood Drain”