It was ironic, she thought. Her first shift at the museum was understaffed, it was just the two of them in ceramics. He was dark-lashed, very slight – given more to edges than the centre of things […]
Essay | A Dream of Maps: Notes from a Book Launch Tour, June 1981 by Chris Rice
Chris Rice first met Matthew Sweeney at a poetry workshop in London in 1976, and they remained friends for forty-two years until Matthew’s death in 2018. Chris Rice’s elegy to Matthew and their long friendship […]
Review | A Frank O’Hara Notebook by Bill Berkson
A Frank O’Hara Notebook, Bill Berkson, No Place Press, 2019, 278 pp, £35.00 (hardcover) Frank O’Hara’s poetry has previously been described…
Interview | Sara Shamma: Modern Slavery at Bush House Arcade
Simon Tait Slavery and the mother lode In 2012, shortly before a car bomb exploded outside her suburban Damascus front…
Review | Seen by your fingertips: Queen Mob’s Tea House and Berfrois
Anyone who thinks fiction and poetry are dying art forms needs to stay at home and get online more. As Russell Bennetts wrote in The Digital Critic ‘the revolution might not be televised, but will almost certainly be seen by your fingertips.’ Bennetts’s two literary websites […]
Poetry | Letter to Bez by Chris McCabe
Bez, post-Victorian Boz, Viz incarnate / and Viceroy of the sinew, what is the name / for light that detracts from the stars? / Urban pollutants de-lux distant galaxies / as we walk after / parties through school fields, / via car parks, past vacant vats & waste lots […]
Extract | Paradox by Incognito
Incognito Paradox i get lost in my head sometimes tangled and stuck in my thoughts. it took me years of…
Review | September 1, 1939: A Biography of a Poem by Ian Sansom
September 1, 1939: A Biography of a Poem, Ian Sansom, Harper Collins Publishers, 2019, 352 pp, £16.99 (hardback) W.H. Auden’s…
Interview | Oliver Payne on The Art of Warez
Acclaimed artist-filmmaker Oliver Payne, with the help of one-time ANSI artist Kevin Bouton-Scott, brings the lost computer-generated art scene back to life in a new film entitled THE ART OF WAREZ. The film carefully documents the ANSI art scene […]
Review | Trodden Before by Patricia McCarthy
Our age is rich in lyric poetry; no age perhaps has been richer. But for our generation and the generation that is coming the lyric cry of ecstasy or despair, which is so intense, so personal, and so limited, is not enough. – Virginia Woolf, ‘Poetry, Fiction and the Future’, 1927
Interview | AlanJames Burns on Entirely Hollow Aside from the Dark
This September sees a powerful art event transform the unique setting of Cresswell Crags Cave, Nottinghamshire. In complete darkness, visual and environmental artist AlanJames Burns stages a psychoacoustic sound artwork entitled Entirely hollow aside from the dark […]
Essay | A.E. Housman: Loveliest of Poets by Patrick Maxwell
A. E. Housman was an introverted man whose poetry is somewhat unique in its widespread appeal. Despite only producing two collections of poetry in his lifetime (A Shropshire Lad in 1896 and Last Poems in 1922), his reputation as a master of lyricism […]
Essay | Come Back West, Magic Realism, We Need You Too
In 2016, Roisin O’Donnell published an article in The Irish Times which addressed the curious fact that so few Irish writers wrote in the magic realist mode. Putting in a plea for magic realism, she argued that “Ireland, with its healthy litany of bread-crusts-make-your-hair-go-curly superstitions, along with its hand-me-down myths […]
Fiction | We Can Be Friends by Lauren Sarazen
There was a cluster of coats and hats careening over the railing, and when I got closer I could see what they were looking at. The basin, which had been full of water the last time I’d passed, was drained to the dregs and men in coveralls and tall rubber boots were crawling around in the sludge […]
Essay | W.H. Auden: The Man Who Spoke for the Dumb by Patrick Maxwell
One of the hallmarks of a great artist is their often lugubrious disdain for their own work. The reclusive French composer Paul Dukas was self-critical to the degree that he only allowed fifteen of his works to be published. Needless to say, they have become much loved […]
Essay | Travel Writers as Citizens of Nowhere by Cecily Blench
At the Conservative Party Conference in 2016, shortly after the Brexit vote, the new Prime Minister Theresa May gave a speech in which she said these words: ‘If you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere’. She made this point while trying to address the concerns of those who voted for Brexit because of immigration […]
Review | 58th Venice Biennale
Venice, that city of dreams and the inspiration for artists and writers from Turner to Italo Calvino, sees its 58th…
Review | The Governesses by Anne Serre, tr. by Mark Hutchinson
Briony Willis The Governesses The Governesses, Anne Serre, trans. by Mark Hutchinson, Les Fugitives, 2019, pp. 108, £10.00. (paperback) In…
Review | James Cook: The Voyages at The British Library
By Charlie Allen James Cook: The Voyages, British Library, 69 Euston Road, NW1 2DB It is appropriate that an exhibition…
Review | A Girl Behind Dark Glasses by Jessica Taylor-Bearman
Review | A Girl Behind Dark Glasses by Jessica Taylor-Bearman Published by Hashtag Press, 2018 If you’re a certain age you…
Poetry | The Goldfinches of Rome by Peter Anderson
Carduelis carduelis (Fringilla carduelis. Linn. 1758) Dawn on the Palatine: planets bow out, stars pick their way through rat-traps and…
Poetry | Under the Loquat by Peter Anderson
He had that majority under the loquat, rain falling like a god in gold, the breakthrough sun, and the spin…
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