These readings stay closely with poems, fiction, essays, and other creative work, attending to language, structure, tone, and what a piece seems to be reaching towards.
The aim is not simply to evaluate a piece of writing, but to stay with it carefully enough for its strengths, tensions, patterns, and possibilities to become clearer in language.
Most pieces already know more than they first appear to.
Often, something in the work is trying to emerge more fully, while another part is holding too tightly to explanation, certainty, or control.
A close reading can help clarify where the writing feels most alive, where it begins to flatten, and where the deeper movement of the piece may actually be taking place.
My responses tend to focus less on rules or prescriptions and more on presence: what the language is doing, where the energy of the work gathers, what remains unresolved, and where the writing seems most fully itself.
I’m particularly interested in work that is willing to take imaginative, emotional, or stylistic risks.
The feedback itself is often exploratory and developmental rather than corrective.
Sometimes this means discussing structure or clarity in direct terms.
Sometimes it means staying with an image, tonal movement, or unresolved tension long enough for something more precise to emerge from it.
Written Readings
Detailed written feedback on submitted work
£50
One-to-one Readings
Close discussion of a submitted piece
in conversation
60 minutes · Online or in person (Bedford)
£75
Complete Manuscript Readings
A full reading of the submitted work, accompanied by substantial written reflections on its movement, structure, voice, and the questions it appears to be asking of itself.
Rather than prescribing changes, the intention is to remain with the manuscript carefully enough for its deeper shape and possibilities to become clearer.
From £500
You’re welcome to send poetry, fiction, essays, fragments, or unfinished work.
Please send enquiries with the subject READINGS to:
contact@maxthackara.ukIf you’d like a sense of the kind of engagement these readings involve, you may find something of it reflected in The Parlour.
The same attention to language, presence, and imaginative risk continues here too.