Listening in - Steve Spence

'In the explorations, nothing is resolved and everything is considered as we move quickly from one captured thought to another.’

Mike Ferguson (gravyfromthe gazebo)

 

‘By fitting his random statements into a tight, cohesive structure, Spence rather brilliantly mimics the modern mind in transit. We are faced with constant information and often against our will, our consciousness constantly tries to amalgamate it, to squeeze some meaning out of it by fitting it into our pre-existing structure of thought.

The effect is like walking down a city street: there’s a sale on, there’s a daft advert, what are they talking about? That man has a placard – don’t read it, too late, I’ve read it – podcast in the ears and a woman shouting at her husband, remembering a thing someone said long ago and coming up with a perfect response in your own head…..   .’

Joe Darlington (Manchester Review of Books)

 

‘Spence, on a certain level is involved in a game with the reader, this can read a bit like a metanarrative, and admittedly, in those terms, he rarely puts a foot wrong. We are into a wholly realised space at a tangent from social realism.’

Clark Allison (Tears in the Fence)