Read Part II of Moniza Alvi’s “At the Time of Partition”.
Three Poems
Dis The obvious story, my darling, is that Dis caught you into his dark kingdom. I don’t know where I…
Labrys Child
Well grown I am the axe of two horns born of beast hair and her sharp flesh The pretty…
Poppy Day in a County Dublin Convent School
Break time. I shook the poppies in a box fired with the mission of remembrance. The green-uniformed girls favoured…
The Phoenix of Blackburn
Pigeons roosted in chimneys, made do with muck in lieu of nest – cooed like wind in bottleneck, shrugged…
Chest of Drawers
She speaks to the postman frequently, gives him small jars of cloudy honey at Christmas and invites him in…
Round Trip
Something has been forgotten, something important. At first, she thinks it’s an object, a ring of some sort –…
Final Furlong
He pulls the bolt back quietly and slips in through the crack. It’s gloomy, and the straw on the…
The Love-Light of Granny Bones
I was so careful but she caught me in the child’s room anyway – with the child mind you…
No Hooting or Fuss
Peter Carpenter Bernard Spencer: Complete Poetry, edited by Peter Robinson, Bloodaxe Books, 384pp, £15 (paperback) In 1974, in an introduction…
At Your Own Perils: Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More
Sean Elliott Sir Thomas More, edited by John Jowett, Arden Shakespeare, 360pp, £16.99 (paperback) For the editors of the Arden…
Long Day’s Journey into Night
Terry Kelly Night, David Harsent, Faber and Faber, 112pp, £9.99 (paperback) David Harsent is the quintessential poet’s poet. An early…
‘Barbarous Goings On’ in 1930s Portugal
Pereira Maintains, Antonio Tabucchi, Canongate Books, 195pp, £14.99 (hardback) ‘It isn’t easy to do one’s best in a country like…
Singing the Body Electra
Erik Martiny One Secret Thing, Sharon Olds, Jonathan Cape, 96pp, £10 (paperback) The most recurrent criticism of Sharon Olds’s work…
Assaying Essaying Saying: Montaigne’s Poetics of Identity
I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics; that is my physics. In 1570, at the…
Rediscovering Thackeray
We are fast approaching Thackeray’s bicentenary: he was born in Calcutta on 18 July 1811, the only son of a successful East India Company official.
The Arrival of Gastronomy
Gastronomy, ‘the art and science of delicate eating’ [OED], would have been anathema to the Christian morality of the Middle…
W.H. Auden and ‘September 1, 1939’
‘September 1, 1939’ – perhaps the most controversial poem Auden ever wrote – saw its author accused of having abandoned his country.
Lionel Trilling’s Mad Students
I Joseph Howe, the hero of Lionel Trilling’s celebrated story ‘Of This Time, of That Place’ (Partisan Review, January-February 1943),…
Nigel Hankin, and Hanklyn-Janklin
I heard about Nigel Hankin’s death in an unusual way – when an obituary reference in the BBC programme Brief…
John Soane and the Light of his Life
There is something, well, almost fraudulent about the tranquillity of the Sir John Soane Museum, about the delight in knowing…