Metaphors of a Troubled Mind
Lucky to be an Artist, Unity Spencer, Unicorn Press, 2015, 256 pp. £24 (hardcover) The title Unity Spencer has chosen…
Jane Austen, Illustrated
Picturing Jane Austen (1775–1817) has never been easier. With her image set to grace the ten-pound note in 2017, millions…
China’s Swinburne: the Enigma of Shao Xunmei’s Life and Art
In both China and the West, very little has been written on Shao Xunmei. Googling his name leads to a…
The Children of a Demon-Queen
Amidst all the ethnic strife of Sri Lanka, it’s easy to forget that, hidden away in the interior, there remains…
Creachann/Scallop
Creachann Na samhraidhean ud, choisicheadh Dad sinn sios dhan eighre ann an Àrnol: sgrùdamaid sgoid ’s propach ’s canastairean…
Girl in the Blue Pool
I am years back and full of echoes. Chlorine, urine, raucous cuff of voices on broken surface. A boy…
Let the Mountain Sing its Own Song
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer Robert Burns,…
The Invisibility of Beauty
The 56th Biennale di Venezia (various artists and venues until 22 November 2015) Ruskin’s Venice: The Stones Revisited (New Edition),…
Growing Up a Flaneur
As a boy I wandered through the streets, stores and parks of my East Bronx neighbourhood avidly noticing everything that…
Gobha nan Glasan/The Locksmith
Gobha nan Glasan Tha eòlas ann am buth gobha nan glasan air Bread St o Theodore à Samos, o…
Love and Judgement
L’Amore dei Tre Re, Italo Montemezzi, Opera Holland Park, July 22nd – August 1st. In early 1939, with the threat…
Edmund Spenser’s Pictures
In forrein costes, men sayd, was plenty: And so there is, but all of miserye. I dempt there much to…
Pterodactyl
We sail, loose-kneed over murky jade water towards Terrapin Point. Our blood-red ponchos cling to our bare arms. You…
The Story Behind Storysongs
The highly regarded poetry publisher Agenda has, exceptionally, produced a bilingual double-fronted hardback book of animal whimsies for children,…
Breathless In Jerusalem
Here in the Municipal Garden – all white paths and straggly flowers – asphalt’s hot beneath one’s feet, baked…
The 21st Century: The Moon Under Water
London, 1946: bombed buildings, bad food and black market spivs. While recent World War victory and Attlee’s new Welfare…
Words and Pictures
Keeping an Eye Open, Julian Barnes, Jonathan Cape, 2015, 275 pp. £16.99 (paperback) Lines of Vision: Irish Writers on…
Slavic Ritual
The Little Town Where Time Stood Still, Bohumil Hrabal, trans. James Naughton, NYRB Classics, 2015, 320pp, £10.99 (paperback) …
81 Sturla Road
Poor world, the violet insect-o-cutor glow of streetlights on the fallen snow is something like my need of him…
The Memory Of Touch
A moth falling, landing in my lap, as she then says. ‘Don’t worry, they worry me too, these moths,…
Epithalamium, with Squirrels
for Liz and Bob Saw this, today, and thought of you two: there, not there, the quantum flicker of…
Being Kept by a Jackdaw
At a country fair a couple called Dave and Di Nelstrop Came from Bow, in Devon, to sell tansy…
No Filler, Only Killer
Where Have You Been? Selected Essays, Michael Hofmann, Faber & Faber, 2015, 304pp, £30 (hardback) The poet and…
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