GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
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Refusal (after Les Murray)
DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
In as many languages as necessary:
nyet, nein, less chance
I’ll click love on the latest post-
post-avant-garde patio you’ve addended
to the foundationless house of your theory,
than of a bull exiting a slaughterhouse’s iron jaws
with his swaggering rump intact.
I’d rather tear out bits of my own liver
with an argumentative breadknife,
mash it into a pâté and serve it
atop water biscuits to the next meeting
of your posh ladies’ poetry semi-circle
than listen to those who say hourly rosaries
to the Etruscan goddess Mania
to be made tenured Chair of Thin, Fat, or Bald Studies,
when you open a mouthload of exquisite
teeth to speak of the pink-willy privilege
of discontinued West Virginia coalminers,
who have nothing better to do now
than sit on the porch all day,
blackening their hankies
like aristocrats.
Similar stories
On the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish civil war, ALAN MORRISON selects some poems from a new anthology
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry
by Josie Giles