Synopsis
Contemporary writing for Contemporary readers Dream Catcher 22. As Sebastian Barker describes, Dream Catcher 22 ‘looks and feels excellent, with a fine degree of organisational intelligence and independence of mind.’ This issue contains remarkable poetry from such British authors as Myra Schneider (shortlisted for the single poem category of the Forward Prize, 2007) and Tony Flynn winner of the English association Fellows Poetry Prize, 2007 with Seeing Voices (published in this issue). Another prominent voice is Josephine Dickinson’s; her new collection Night Journey has just been published by Flambard; its title poem appears in Dream Catcher 22. Chris Firth, once Dream Catcher fiction editor, has gravitated toward writing some extraordinary poems in the Sufi tradition; three appear. Americans include award-winning Donna Pucciani (well published in this country), Jonathan Lewis who wishes to dedicate his poems to his grandmother who drove an ambulance in London during the Blitz and the powerful Mario Susko with another unusual angle on consequence of violence in the lives of every day people. Humour’s never forgotten with Michael Swann’s empathy with a nervous tannoy, and Alessio Zanelli’s The Mail Eater reveals hazards of the postal system – a private hazard. Fiction is always important in each Dream Catcher. The number of fiction submissions received suggests we’re gaining a reputation for publishing some startling work. In this issue, stories range from faintly supernatural in Mark Howard Jones’s The Strongest Branch to the sinister in Cameron Dunham’s Joining The Gym. You may never want to join a gym again. Joolz Denby’s aged computer techno-suburban secret agent has her own list of targets and people to rescue in A Merry Christmas To Us All. Jack Debney, a regular Dream Catcher contributor, presents a selected piece from his Grimsby-located Jannicott Stories. Mr Ketilsby may be quintessential English, but it discloses telling details about the process of bereavement and different assumptions that have shaped and re-shaped our inner cities and much more in the post WWII Britain. Michael Spring’s Belfast to Glory is as much documentary as fiction as it maps a connection between the best of Irish poetry and a bigger-than-life US rock celebrity. The Old Tom, by American Sue Williams, explores with reserve passion how teenagers grow up and alter out of all recognition in front of each other, even when they’re close as a Tom and Ruth. Dream Catcher is particularly fortune to have the work of a fine British calligrapher, Mick Paine, in Dream Catcher 22. As well as on the cover, five more of his extraordinary letterings and artwork punctuates the journal. Highlighting this art is especially appropriate in a literary arts journal. Mick Paine pushes the image of words beyond discernible meaning, to the creative potential of the letter’s form, written, elaborated and multiplied to suggest a different language from the ordinary symbol. Six books are reviewed: fiction, Company of Liars, by Karen Maitland and Sally Spedding’s short stories collection, Strangers Waiting; poetry collections by Mimi Khalvati (The Meanest Flower), Mario Susko’s Closing Time and Ian Park’s The Cage; also an anthology of poems about bats On a Bat’s Wing, from Five Leaves Press, edited by Michael Baron. Dream Catcher is an essential magazine – contemporary writing for contemporary readers.
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