Alan Humm's Writing
Alan Humm is an author and the editor of One Hand Clapping magazine. Praised for his "absolutely terrific" recreation of Dickensian London, his "ecstatic phrasemaking" and his "powerfully visceral" and "luminous" poems, he has written three novels and two books of poetry. The Sparkler, his novel about Charles Dickens, was published in May 2024 and his first poetry collection, A Brief and Biased History of Love, is out now.
Reviews
For The Sparkler
"This is absolutely terrific – thoroughly steeped in Dickens's own idioms and ideas while also taking a step back and coolly assessing them from a distance. It's... reminiscent (in a good way) of the rich period atmospheres generated by those two neo-Victorian Peters, Ackroyd and Carey." Professor Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
"A remarkable Dickens-fi debut." Philip Hoare
"The Sparkler is glittering and luminous." Carol McKay
*****
For A Brief and Biased History of Love
"That is the true triumph of this collection: how full it is of unexpected turns, ecstatic phrasemaking, a vivid inner life. It leaves you with the knowledge that there is more to us than most suppose." Fran Lock
"A soft, blunt, insistent rhythm in Alan Humm's lines beats time to accounts of absent friends, of past and present violence, of love's uncertainties." David Harsent
​
"Alan Humm's poised and poignant debut pinpoints the lingering shimmer of shared experience with exceptional confidence and compassion." Josephine Balmer
"This is an impressive, thoughtful debut. To accompany him as a reader in his search is surprising and rewarding." Louise Peterkin
​
"This debut collection merits reading and re-reading with its fresh, startlingly original images and equally original angles on ordinary lives, losses and loves." Patricia McCarthy
​
*****
​
​For My Father is Calling the Neighbours Names
​
"This is a collection that sustains itself admirably, not an inch of give in its tautly turned lines, not a scintilla of precision out of place. More than consummate craft, I think this tendency displays a rare patience and generosity of attention; the respect that poetry owes to the world. Here is a world we recognise, but few have the guts or the skill to set it down like this: so fresh, so frightening, so hauntingly familiar."
Fran Lock
"These poems balance deftly between transience and appetite, between the clarity of distance and the energy of immediate sensations. Whether the material is from memory or other lives like Chaplin’s or Bowie’s glimpsed through the curtains of their fame, whether the setting is the local pub or a thousand miles away, the gaze is unassuming and acute, inviting those sparks of connection when the subject looks back from the page with a life of its own." Philip Gross
"Alan Humm’s poems come from a place of affinity with life’s outsiders: the drunkards, the dreamers, the brilliant, the flawed - the jugglers of darkness and light. An intense, intelligent and intoxicating new collection from a poet who knows the ropes." Maggie Sawkins
