Jim Neat Lucy Fricke

Jim Neat Lucy FrickeJim Neat is an unusual and striking memoir, a coalescing of prose, poetry, found documents and photographs. In it Mary Oliver uncovers the life of her father (b. 1904) and ranges across the history of England and Canada in the twentieth century. Jim left England in his teens, as a seaman. He travelled to South Africa, stowed away to Australia and eventually landed in Canada just before the Great Depression. Here he met his partner Lizbietta in a

"I cannot imagine poetry without her

but the sense of timelessness is sometimes disrupted by poems which relate contemporary events

This hugely well-informed and entertaining account of live music in Reading between 1966 and 1976 charts the journey from the emergence of psychedelia to the dawn of punk

has been living in south London suburb for thirty years

visiting and belonging

Written from the edges of the city

His debut poetry collection

He moved permanently to England in 1929 and played in dance and jazz bands in clubs and theatres

introduced by Issa J

She was born in Ludhiana

and yet she manages to imbue her characters with a fragile humanity and an old-fashioned sense of the melancholy of modern life

enable a broader appreciation for the personal context and general impact of Mir's work