MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
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Young Communists (Red and Mags)
by Alastair McLeish
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 missing sister, the vengeful WAG, cruise ship claustrophobia, and reanimated Avengers
Three great releases of lost concerts by Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Taylor & Stan Sulzman, and Joe Henderson
To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
Red couldn’t wait, at seventeen in local uni,
to learn himself the leid of literarurszene,
and follow logische, thought that’s naturally wrought,
so one day he’d be equal to Marx-Engels-Werke.
Friedrich Holderlin a friend, the introverted Rilke,
though none would give like Mags’ comradely love;
who though a Germanist, was foremost in Left Brexit,
and drank to EU’s grief, with pinot noir and Kirschwasser.
both laughed out loud — no, the end of history hadn’t come,
“good friends! we’re not de trop, the dialectic yet drives on
cunningly, below the world’s mêlée, the rational
remains the real; turns all that’s solid into air — the oligarch
but transitory. Look past him! there you’ll see
our dialectic, still working in mysterious ways.”
Alastair McLeish was born in Bathgate in 1945. His long eco-feminist poem, Wee Greta As Telt By Gaia was a runner-up in the Sangschaw Prize of 2024.
Poetry submissions to [email protected].
