CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Sophie Fenella - Last Day for Burning
Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
Last Day for Burning
Sophie Fenella
The photo album is half full
leave it
pick up your rucksack
leave lightly
like ash falling from cigarettes
like snow
the speed of leaving is equivalent
to the time it takes
to forget why you came to the computer
sharp abrupt flight
like the last word of an argument
like an elastic band flung
accidentally
you are not ready for your eight in the morning meeting
you’d rather leave this burning building to smolder
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