Serious Play
Say Something Back, Denise Riley, Picador, May 2016, pp. 96, £9.99 (Paperback) Commotion of the Birds, John Ashberry, Carcanet,…
To the Man
I was a songbird, one of the kind whose name I do not know, plain of plumage but with…
Basra 1958
Three of them boarded the bus rifles pointed aggressively bayonets fixed and furious glinting brightly in the stippled morning…
I Have Called You By Your Name
I. Hvalfjörður I’d promised Sam whales, a substitute for his Mum who was off on holiday with her new…
In Search of Freedom
I was in a taxi searching for her house, but was anxious; would she meet me, tell me her…
Mitad del Mundo
The poem is in the form of a letter sent from Ecuador to a loved one, far away. Mitad…
Cultural Readings of the Refugee Crisis
In jeans and a t-shirt, demurely slouching at the end of a table of prominent and impassioned speakers, Hassan…
Godhuli (Cowdust)
Beyond the bend there were buffaloes, Cows and a single boy perched, Half-naked, on the back of a buffalo.…
Rain When it Falls on Bracken by Fiona Sampson
Rain when it falls on bracken silkily is like a sea of sounds and you are deep among them…
‘sawed railings’: Poetic and Cultural Identities
Scaffolding, Eléna Rivera, Princeton University Press, 2017, £14.95 (paperback) Playing the Octopus, Mary O’Malley, Carcanet, 2016, £9.99 (paperback) Eighty-two sonnets,…
The Sheer Fun of Power
Odessa Stories, Isaac Babel, translated by Boris Dralyuk, Pushkin Press, October 2016, pp. 224, £12.00 (paperback) ‘Babel speaks in…
Paintscapes
Maggi Hambling: Edge, Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1 March – 13 April 2017 One of this spring’s most rewarding…
Pigeon Feathers by Soumya Bhattacharya
At the time the boy had no idea that this was the last thing they were doing as a…
In A Raw State
Crude, Sally O’Reilly, Eros Press, October 2016, £12.00 (paperback) There are no talking telescreens or robot slaves in the fictive…
Disembodied
1. My body carved from abandoned bricks of a ruined temple, ————————————-from minaret-shards of an old mosque, from slate-remnants of…
Hardwrought Works
War Music, Christopher Logue, Faber, 2015, edited by Christopher Reid, 341pp £20 (hardback) Spills, Angela Leighton, Carcanet, 2016, 183pp, £12.99…
Reading to Percy Lubbock
Percy Lubbock (1879-1965) was an English author, principally a literary critic, admired also in his lifetime for his fine…
Vanessa Can Stand Alone
Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 4 June 2017 ‘Life apart from human beings was almost completely visual for…
My London by Navtej Sarna
Navtej Sarna is an Indian writer and diplomat. He is presently India’s ambassador to the United States. This is…
Nyasi – Grass
After monsoon rains When wind shivers Grass taller than my head undulates like snakes Waves invitingly to travellers To…
Visions for the New Era of the Patina of Time
More than sixty-five years have passed since Le Corbusier was commissioned by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to fulfil the role of…
A Child of the Sun
Katherine Mansfield and Psychology, eds. Clare Hanson, Gerri Kimber, Todd Martin, Edinburgh University Press, September 2016, 224 pp, £70.00 (hardback) Katherine…