CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Paul Birtill - Claimant
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
Claimant
Paul Birtill
We got talking in a bar
and I took her back to my flat.
I suppose I was trying to impress her,
and told her I was a published author,
wrote poetry and plays, mentioned that
several had been staged at London theatres,
and that my poems had been in national newspapers.
'You're on the dole,' she said, pointing at my UB40
on the mantelpiece.
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ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
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
TONY FOX invites readers to come and hear the story of the remarkable Liverpudlian International Brigader Alexander Foote