An Ocean of Chaos and Creativity
The Jemaa el Fna in Marrakech is like nowhere else on earth. Sacred space, cultural crossroads, market place, meeting…
London’s Greatest Cowboy
In the mid-1920s, a curious figure turned up in south-west London. He had emerged from one of the harshest…
‘Six Thousand Feet Beyond Man and Time’: Nietzsche’s Concept of the Übermensch
I do not wish for life again. How have I borne it? By being creative. What makes me able…
Angry Birds
My father is watching his father die on a lime-green pillow. The tumours nestle in his crotch like the…
Pebble Play
Evening. The gathered day hangs in unfinished spaces: gateless lawn, a garage door propped with waste metal I work…
Anarchist Sun
Taste, red one! Smell swaying white winds, look hard at the universe: Sun, gold glittering stars, look until you…
South Armagh
A bruised sun in a March sky. Along the border army watchtowers scan hill and gorse. Beware the road…
Kilburn Park Station
rising on the escalator under violet lights, all is eclipsed by the brightness pouring down from the oval glass…
Speak My Name
After Rumi O nameless One, O stranger, O you who stand at the open door as if wanting to…
Raffles: The Gentleman Thief
I A tendril of smoke gracefully swirled up from his cigarette into the low-lying, jaundiced fog. Jermyn Street was…
Polyphemus’ Song
I play the ogre still for their Sicilian tale, though I can sing as true as Tereus’ nightingale. The laurel…
Scales in B
‘A little ladder of sound’ – W. S. Graham For Ben Bede lived with the secret of the carol,…
Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, Op.19, no.6
mit sehr zartem Ausdruck – Arnold Schoenberg’s direction in score Here is Mahler’s musical postmortem, his 4/4 dirges laid…
European Disintegration
HISTORY Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, Norman Davies, Allen Lane, 848pp, £30 (hardback) As a roll call…
Killing Time
FICTION The Third Reich, Roberto Bolaño, Picador, 288pp, £18.99 (hardback) Since his premature death in 2003 at the age…
The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here
POETRY The Complete Poems, Philip Larkin, edited by Archie Burnett, Faber and Faber, 768pp, £40 (hardback) When Philip Larkin…
A Design for Life
A re-examination of a national treasure: ‘Terence Conran: The Way We Live Now’ at the Design Museum until 4th March in honour of his eightieth birthday.
Like a Foreign Country
POETRY The Returning Sky, Peter Robinson, Shearsman Books, 108pp, £8.95 (paperback) Peter Robinson’s new collection, The Returning Sky, a…
Both Inquisitive and Afraid
POETRY Collected Poems and Selected Translations, Norman Cameron, edited by Warren Hope and Jonathan Barker, Anvil Press, 176pp, £12.95…
Something a Bit Personal
MEMOIR The Following Game, Jonathan Smith, Peridot Press, 232pp, £14.99 (hardback) With the Kisses of his Mouth, Monique Roffey,…
A Great Leap Forward: But Does a Cliff Lie Ahead?
The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700, Roderick Floud, Robert W. Fogel,…
Edna O’Brien, John Huston and Joyce’s ‘The Dead’
An investigation to unearth the love lost between Edna O’Brien and John Huston (according to Joyce).
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