DAVID YEARSLEY is fascinated by the account of four composers who transformed their experiences of the second world war and the Holocaust into deeply moving works of art
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Pretty in Pink
Masterful poems reveal revolutionary potential in women’s experience
FINGER ON THE PULSE: Ruth Aylett
PETER MASON thrills to the sound of south London-born Yussef Dayes, and the galaxy of musicians drawn into his orbit
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Re-releases from Iain Matthews, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and The Charlie Daniels Band
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
RUTH AYLETT’S new collection Pretty in Pink is written in a “fury of hope” for the political coming of age of a new generation shorn of patriarchy and gender stereotypes.
And there is no doubt where her loyalties lie. She summons the presence of the murdered Rosa Luxemburg: “I was,” says the revolutionary. “I am. I will be.”
At the book’s centre is the poem The Chosen One — Sestina for a Lost Child, which tests the expressive power of words to the limit. Within its dreamy meditative structure — a free-form mantra — she appears to grieve the miscarriage of a child: “a red life leaves/the body, a not-yet-child.”
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From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin