CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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F. O'Leary - Winter is Coming
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
Winter is Coming
F. O'Leary
She said it first came on when she sensed
the exact length of the queue,
– the full force of their riled-up-venom, waiting –
as she left a few bits at the till,
having been drawn in by the festive two-for-ones,
and the total was too much.
She said the feeling came up stronger
when she had an old pillow case laid out
– the Christmas ads a fuzz in the background –
struggling to make an angel costume
before the next day’s school play,
and she hadn’t yet found the words to say
that she couldn’t
get the time off work to watch.
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by Widad Nabi