If you have looked at the news recently you’d realise that we are in a time of political turmoil; Brexit dominates everything in the national conversation, other urgent matters about the climate and the social malaise of the country are falling by the wayside as we get more and more introspective. I am one of those who has taken to skimming the weekend papers and generally avoiding the news as it is just so depressing.

There are others though who see that this time is an opportunity to explore a post-Brexit Britain, and Tempest is a collection of poetry, short stories and articles that contemplate a time after. Some of these stories were from a dystopian and science fiction perspective, which as a fan of that sort of material was good to read.

I really liked some of them, in particular, We should Own the stars, Nature and Culture and The Carp Whisperer. As with any collection like this, there were the odd one or two that didn’t work for me. But then the idea of these collections is to bring your attention to authors who you may not have known about and to hear viewpoints that you wouldn’t normally hear in your regular media consumption. I must say though that the cover is by an artist called Roz Strauss and it is stunning. Solid little collection. ( )