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Jacob Polley: Material Properties •  Helen Ivory: Wunderkammer •  Kate Noakes : Goldhawk Road •Josephine Balmer: Ghost Passage• Paul Eric Howlett: The Bedfordshire Boy•Tim Murphy: Mouth of Shadows

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Material Properties by Jacob Polley. Picador. ISBN: 978-1-0350-0008-1. Reviewed by Jonathan Timbers

The blurb on the back of this rich and engaging new collection by Jacob Polley describes it as ‘undeniably his finest work to date’. Whether this is true or not, the collection is best enjoyed for its abundant creativity and best understood as a book about translation.

The golden thread of the book consists of translations of the Anglo Saxon Exeter riddles. You can compare Polley’s versions with the originals, commentaries and more literal contemporary English translations thanks to an extremely useful website edited by Megan Cavell, with Matthias Ammon, Neville Mogford, Jennifer Neville, Alexandra Reider and…