Dialect does it
Blake Morrison, 5 December 1985
No Mate for the Magpie
by Frances Molloy.
Virago, 170 pp., £7.95, April 1985,0 86068 594 2 Show More
by Frances Molloy.
Virago, 170 pp., £7.95, April 1985,
Hard Lines 2
edited by Ian Dury, Pete Townshend, Alan Bleasdale and Fanny Dubes.
Faber, 95 pp., £2.50, June 1985,0 571 13542 0 Show More
edited by Ian Dury, Pete Townshend, Alan Bleasdale and Fanny Dubes.
Faber, 95 pp., £2.50, June 1985,
No Holds Barred: The Raving Beauties choose new poems by women
edited by Anna Carteret, Fanny Viner and Sue Jones-Davies.
Women’s Press, 130 pp., £2.95, June 1985,0 7043 3963 3 Show More
edited by Anna Carteret, Fanny Viner and Sue Jones-Davies.
Women’s Press, 130 pp., £2.95, June 1985,
Skevington’s Daughter
by Oliver Reynolds.
Faber, 88 pp., £8.95, September 1985,0 571 13697 4 Show More
by Oliver Reynolds.
Faber, 88 pp., £8.95, September 1985,
Trio 4
by Andrew Elliott, Leon McAuley and Ciaran O’Driscoll.
Blackstaff, 69 pp., £3.95, May 1985,0 85640 333 4 Show More
by Andrew Elliott, Leon McAuley and Ciaran O’Driscoll.
Blackstaff, 69 pp., £3.95, May 1985,
The Dread Affair: Collected Poems
by Benjamin Zephaniah.
Arena, 112 pp., £2.95, August 1985,9780099392507 Show More
by Benjamin Zephaniah.
Arena, 112 pp., £2.95, August 1985,
True Confessions and New Clichés
by Liz Lochhead.
Polygon, 135 pp., £3.95, July 1985,0 904919 90 0 Show More
by Liz Lochhead.
Polygon, 135 pp., £3.95, July 1985,
Wild Places: Poems in Three Leids
by William Neill.
Luath, 200 pp., £5, September 1985,0 946487 11 1 Show More
by William Neill.
Luath, 200 pp., £5, September 1985,
“... words like glooby and glubbed. Something similar if less intellectually demanding can be found in Frances Molloy’s novel No Mate for the Magpie, which is written in dialect and follows its heroine from babyhood through convent to civil rights marches. The unfamiliar words are few (wheen, wain, sheoghe – the last, ‘changeling’, beautifully applied ... ”
