CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Buying Aubergines from Tesco Extra, Rotherham, the Day After a Race Riot at the Holiday Inn in Manvers
by Matthew Paul
Pro-immigration supporters outside the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, August 4, 2024
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
Aubergine the internet tells me
means ‘fruit of the eggplant’
from the French
from the Catalan alberginera
from the Arabic al-badinjan
from the Persian badin-gan
from the Sanskrit vatigagama.
I think of this while three aubergines
cosy up to one another
in the metal basket I’m carrying
in a daze along the ‘World Foods’ aisle.
I think about this too while everyone
in the shop carries on as though
attempted lynchings of asylum-seekers
up the road didn’t actually happen.
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ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
by Christopher Norris
The Bard commutes to work for the first time in 45 years
The Labour Party proposal to scrap benefits for those unable to work will be debated in Parliament next Tuesday, and threatens the most vulnerable in our society. ALAN MORRISON presents some responses in poetry