Tessellate is the 2006 anthology from the University of East Anglia's prestigious creative writing programme. With contributions from the fiction, poetry, scriptwriting and life-writing courses, taking subjects as varied as Liverpool schoolgirls to octopuses hiding in closets, it is clear that this anthology is filled with, as Hugo Williams phrases it, "a strange and intoxicating new pollen." Since its inception in 1970, the University of East Anglia has been responsible for introducing authors such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Naomi Alderman, Jane Harris, Trezza Azzopardi, Tracy Chevalier, Toby Litt, Andrew Miller, Mick Jackson, Diana Evans, and Owen Sheers to the reading public; all of these major literary figures are graduates of the MA in Creative Writing. Michael Caines, from the Times Literary Supplement, writes of Tessellate's prose offerings that "these stories bode well for the future of fiction." From the parlour of a Victorian spiritualist to the bedrooms of a New Zealand brothel, this future is one of unpredictability and artful, immediately engaging storytelling. Tessellate also includes contributions from the scriptwriting programme, in the media of radio, film and television. The pieces range from a look at a Renaissance architect struggling to build the duomo in Florence, to adult siblings' comic frustration with their ageing parents. The life-writing course, described by Richard Holmes as "scholarly, spirited, stylish" cover subjects as varied as Doctor Johnson and Vivien Leigh. The geographic diversity of the 11 poets in this anthology is reflected in their myriad approaches to language – from formal to free verse, from brief bursts of poetry to extended works, from elegies and philosophical musings to lyric confessionals. What unites the poetry course is a passion for their work that "burst[s] upon . . . contemporary poetry like a firework display" (Hugo Williams). Tessellate is UEA's 18th literary collection. It will be launched in London at 7.00pm at the Horse Bar, 124 Westminster Bridge Road on Friday 6 October 2006; and in Norwich at 7.00pm in the UEA Drama Studio on Tuesday 10 October 2006.
This anthology is good. Read it.
Jono Tosch
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