‘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,…
Paintscapes
Maggi Hambling: Edge, Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1 March – 13 April 2017 One of this spring’s most rewarding…
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…
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…
Links in the Chain
Kandinsky, Marc and Der Blaue Reiter, Edited by Ulf Kuster for Fondaton Beyeler Beyeler Stiftung, Wyss Foundation 2016 It…
Statues Missing Chunks
In the Roman Art wing of who-knows-which museum ancient torsos are on exhibit some of which are missing chunks. Time…
A Trinidadian Friendship
Morning, Paramin, Derek Walcott and Peter Doig, Faber & Faber, November 2016, 116 pp, £22.00 (hardback) This is a lovely,…
Malraux, Camus and the Nobel Prize by Jeffrey Meyers
André Malraux (1901-76) was born in a bourgeois quarter of Paris, Albert Camus (1913-60) in a working-class district in the…
Bread and Salt
The lighthouse was somewhere in the south of his country, that stood unused in the wet smoke that rose from…
Playing Safe
Within the pretty pale pink walls of the Adolfo Mejia theatre, in the centre of Colombia’s Caribbean coastal city of…
Lemons in August
Mineral green Lisbons poised in the desert. I’m watching bees drunk with sun. A blistered leaf. Outside Phoenix, west of…
Whoever is Left to Count the Grain
And measure the rings Do not leave out the xylem Of mingling auras And the sap that adheres Our dream-laden…
The Copulation of Angels
When Milton spoke of the ‘copulation of angels’ And Lear said, ‘Let copulation thrive!’ They were praising the way that…