PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
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Unforgettable scores
Recent releases from radical small-scale presses are more in tune with the times than much of the output from the poetry establishment
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Full of mysterious religious references and radical sound design, the Scottish duo’s new offering is candidate for album of the year, suggests SIMON DUFF
MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
THE UNEXCITING news that Andrew Motion has won the Ted Hughes prize and James Fenton the PEN Pinter prize and that Simon Armitage has been elected Oxford Professor of Poetry has done little to dispel the impression that the contemporary poetry scene is a small and closed world of mutual self-congratulation.
It’s not that these poets are without merit or distinction. But it all looks a bit predictable, not to say dull.
Meanwhile, a long way from the arts-coverage-by-press-release world of the broadsheets and the BBC, it is left to energetic — and usually unpaid — editors working at independent, provincial presses to keep the doors open for different kinds of voices and experiences.
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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
ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician