The rise of clickbait titles in poetry; an imperative if you want to win the National Poetry Competition?

"What you see in the shadows" is a short story from my 2024 collection, Dust, dancing.

‘Secrets & Wisdom’ started life in 2016 as a project with a specific design. The idea was to write a series of short stories, each based on one of the traditional Olympian Gods and on one or more of their individual characteristics. In addition, each story would contain within it either a ‘secret’ held close by the protagonist, or the demonstration – or otherwise! – of ‘wisdom’ / self-knowledge in some form or other.

Over time, as the original project progressed, the reworking of some additional material – both modern and ancient – appeared to lend itself to the general theme, and so the notion was born to expand the brief of ‘Secrets & Wisdom’ and to create a slightly wider and more eclectic collection of short stories.

From the original project, “Angela”, “Anne”, “Hester”, “Hobart” and “Westminster” have made it into this volume (the remaining seven Gods currently lie dormant until they are awoken at some point in the future!).

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An Irregular Piece of Sky contains fifteen contemporary stories in which we meet characters who are trying to come to terms with loss and grief, the potential of love, their histories, and the opportunities the future may offer them.

Ian Gouge introduces us to people who – just like us – are striving to make sense of their place in the world.

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In Ian Gouge’s eclectic new collection, Dust, dancing, many of the protagonists find themselves thwarted: by ambition, by love, by old age. They experience unavoidable setbacks and occasional victories: the man tattooing his life history on his back; the woman fantasising about a Hollywood film star; the man fired from his job; the actress believing she is destined to be ‘a Bond Girl’; the policewoman making a gruesome discovery. We share the pleasure and pain associated with their various journeys, the resonance of our own experience adding layers to our reading.

Gouge’s work has been compared to Henry James, Sally Rooney, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway. Dust, dancing is his fourth collection of short stories.

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Imagine tackling the entirety of Shakespeare’s sonnet cannon with the aim of creating a contemporary and modern interpretation of the poems both in terms of subject and form.

Imagine starting where most poets end – with the rhyme – and beginning each new poem by stripping out every single word from each of the Sonnets except the last one on each line.

Imagine that in tackling the pieces completely the other way around, the primary question became ‘what subject will fit a poem whose lines end with these exact words?’

Imagine a collection entitled not the Sonnets, one which has borrowed its scaffolding from the Bard to produce a sonnet sequence which is something else entirely…

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An Irregular Piece of Sky contains fifteen contemporary stories in which we meet characters who are trying to come to terms with loss and grief, the potential of love, their histories, and the opportunities the future may offer them.

Ian Gouge introduces us to people who – just like us – are striving to make sense of their place in the world.

Amazon UK – Waterstones – Barnes & Noble

A group of five friends who, some thirty years after they lived and worked in the same town, come back together to honour an old friend who has recently died. The weekend is intended as a celebration but merely serves to reignite old emotions and uncover long-held secrets.

“Sally Rooney meets Henry James” – Jim Friedman

“this honest exploration of human nature helped me understand myself better” – Ann Pelletier-Topping

“a story that questions the whole idea of friendship and the notion that we can ever really know anyone” – Janet Philo

“a deeply engaging book…every moment of dialogue and recollection is thoroughly believable” – David Punter

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