A few weeks ago I attended a workshop on asemic poetry at the Ashmolean Museum lead by Sascha Akhtar. The term asemic was coined by visual poets in the 1990s to describe works which have "no semantic content"—poems without words. Asemic poetry makes use of gestures which look like writing and appear interpretable, but which cannot be read. Small children are the among the most prolific producers of asemic works. Their scribble looks like writing but is indecipherable—though t

Pebbles, Beadnell The aim of science is the discovery of truth while the aim of literature is the production of pleasure. A. E. Housman There is a moral as well as material truth,—a truth of impression as well as of form,—of thought as well as of matter; and the truth of impression and thought is a thousand times the more important of the two. John Ruskin The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nob

There are interviews with all of the finalists from the 2020 Manchester Fiction Prize here.

The Manchester Fiction Prize is an international competition with a cash prize of £10,000 for the writer of the best short story...