For once, it’s fine to judge a book by its cover. Stephen Ives’s busy image of Buster Keaton captures, in co-editor Lisa Greenaway’s words, ‘the essence of [Going Down Swinging] the slapstick/serious; the cultural ruckus; the unwavering stare’. Going Down Swinging is an unapologetic miscellany, distinguished by its vibrant eclecticism.

This issue is divided more or less evenly between poetry and prose, and also features several comics. Of the latter, ‘Flic’s Tale’, by writer-artist Jo Waite, has charming moments but fails to ripen into coherency. Vanessa Hutchinson’s succinct ‘How to Sit In Designer Chairs’ is more successful. The prose pieces are of a higher standard. Some stories cleave to familiar domestic settings, such as Julia Chiera’s ‘The Piercing’. Others are more exotic, including ‘Madeleine and the Wheel of Death’, Libby Angel’s dark and dynamic narrative of a circus tragedy.