Slash and Burn Janet Jenkins

Slash and Burn Janet JenkinsThrough war and its aftermaths, a woman fights to keep her daughters safe. Like peasants through the ages, she desperately slashes and burns in order to make a place for her children to return to. A country girl sees her village sacked and her beloved father disappeared. She is taken to the mountains to join the guerrillas, who force her to give up the baby she conceives. Surviving the rebellion, and now a woman, she sets out to find her daughter,

"Derek Ansell's exuberant new biography

Leo Mellor on John Goodby

Owen Gallagher was born in 1949 in Glasgow of Irish parents

with poems translated by Anton Shammas

These contrast with some intensely personal lyrics that touch on childhood trauma

And all their grooms and riders were half-dead And putrefying slowly

The line I can feel and not see

not one word in our mouths

Like his literary hero

This sparkling pocket-epic spans the globe

A Violent Country (1969)

they also smile