‘Whether in subject, form, style or quality, a shortlist can at least set out the stall of contemporary poetry and say: this is, for better or worse, what’s going on.’
Dominic Leonard reviews the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize shortlist.
Review | All Is Not Well by Zadie Loft
‘In the first half, Helen’s pursuit of and infatuation for Bertram seems sweet, comical and harmless; by the second, her actions have been shown to be what they always were: sexual harassment and assault.’
Zadie Loft reviews All’s Well That Ends Well.
Review | Wild Seas, Wilder Cities by Judy Waite
‘The potential for individuals to make a difference is celebrated and echoed throughout this collection.’
Judy Waite reviews ‘Wild Seas, Wilder Cities’.
Review | I for I: Occupations that Blind by Zoe Valery
‘The writing of Pleasure Gardens – and its reading – constitutes an act of resistance; a reclaiming of the digital narrative space that has been blacked out by the state and overwritten by its propaganda machine.’
Zoe Valery reviews ‘Pleasure Gardens’.
Review | Surveillance in Miniature by Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
‘Fatima subtly observes that domesticity – the unit of the family, the capitalist-defined utopia of social togetherness, of selfhood and nationhood itself – always depends on the poor who stand outside of it.’
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou reviews ‘Is Someone There?’.
Review | Poor Art, Rich Rewards by Daisy Sainsbury
‘Arte povera and its afterlife strike me as exemplary of the fate of counter-current movements that so quickly lose their revolutionary value and are subsumed into the institutions they originally set out to critique.’
Daisy Sainsbury reviews ‘Arte Povera’.
Review | Blood and Coal by RC Birchley
‘But amid all of this, there is an undercurrent of something other.’
RC Birchley reviews Sue Harper’s ‘Blood and Coal’.
Review | The Unravelling Tragedy of Untold Lessons by Esmee Wright
‘Tanet is trying to write something that can’t be so immediately defined, somewhere between a true-story narrative – without the exploitative pitfalls of the genre – and a child’s fantasy story with real-world consequences.’
Esmee Wright reviews Untold Lessons by Maddalena Vaglio Tanet.
Review | Looking for Daffodils by Anna de Vivo
‘Both women are potters who haven’t made anything, and both women become disillusioned by the empty promise of an artistic career.’
Anna de Vivo reviews Hannah Regel’s The Last Sane Woman.
Review | Beyond Constructed Film Sets by Sara Quattrocchi Febles
‘Once he’d take the required photographs, he’d move around the set like an angel. No one would see or notice him. He managed to camouflage himself to capture the perfect moment.’
Sara Quattrocchi Febles on Sergio Strizzi at The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art.
Review | Dreamland Laid Bare by Miracle Romano
‘In this chaotic admixture of miserable players, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between aggressor and victim. This leads to the chilling thought that when injustice is empowered and left unchecked, corruption becomes a cycle.’
Miracle Romano reviews Ronaldo Soledad Vivo Jr.’s The Power Above Us All.
Review | Grapes of Wrath by Charlie Taylor
‘Experience is one thing, but facing the cold facts of the world’s material processes is something else.’
Charlie Taylor reviews Munir Hachemi’s Living Things.
Review | Ex on the Beach by Marina Scholtz
‘For a book to be a truly good reissue it should seem outrageous and unjust that it fell out of print in the first place, and Ex-Wife is exactly that.’
Marina Scholtz reviews Ursula Parrott’s Ex-Wife.
Review | In the Eye of the Storm by Callum Tilley
‘It is not displaying tension between styles, but rather the artistic absorption of them.’
Callum Tilley reviews In the Eye of the Storm at the Royal Academy.
Review | The Radical Vision of Pedro Lemebel by Esmee Wright
‘I hope that, with this collection, the anglophone world will continue to expand its interest in world literature; not just the foreign, but the queer, the poor, the almost untranslatable.’
Esmee Wright reviews Pedro Lemebel’s A Last Summer of Queer Apostles.
Review | Clare Best’s Beyond the Gate
John O’Donoghue Clare Best’s Beyond the Gate . Beyond the Gate, Clare Best, (Worple Press, 2023), 88 pages, £12 .…
Review | Anthony Oliveira’s Queer Retelling of the Bible by Esmee Wright
‘To the enigmatic prose of the Bible, Oliveira layers meaning upon those ruins, not to move the story on, but to give voice to the unspoken fear.’
Esmee Wright reviews Anthony Oliveira’s Dayspring.
Review | Ali Lewis’s Absence by Nicola Healey
‘It is a book that engages thought and ideas more than feeling; this is poetry as extreme metaphysical sport.’
Nicola Healey reviews Ali Lewis’s Absence.
Review | Biba: A Legacy Lost and Found by Deborah Nash
‘As our high streets struggle to survive changing shopping habits, brought by the pandemic, the rising cost of living and online purchasing, perhaps we need to revisit Biba’s spirit of playfulness, optimism and laughter – an opportunity unfortunately missed by this show.’
Deborah Nash on The Biba Story at The Fashion and Textile Museum.
Review | Rachael Allen’s God Complex by Elliot C. Mason
‘The demands of the male observer are hidden, his words never breaking through from the silent ubiquity of their god complex.’
Elliot C. Mason reviews Rachael Allen’s God Complex.
Review | Care, Spit, and Queer Confessional: 52 Monologues by Jennifer Jasmine White
‘When we confess, we spit something out, something previously secret and slippery, something summoned up from deep inside.’
Jennifer Jasmine White reviews 52 Monologues at the Soho Theatre.
Reviews | The Lasting Legacy of Bert Hardy’s War Photographs
‘Whilst his subjects range widely, Hardy’s style is constant. Even in the theatre of war, he managed to keep his frame still.’
Henry Roberts reviews Bert Hardy: Photojournalism in War at the Photographers’ Gallery.
Review | Intellectual Property by Katrina Nzegwu
‘Whilst approaching the prosaic in terms of length and division, Warmelo’s disregard for grammatical conventions pays homage to, yet disrupts and furthers a poetic legacy.’
Katrina Nzegwu reviews Aea Varfis-van Warmelo’s Intellectual Property.
Review | The Mother & the Weaver by Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou The Mother & the Weaver The Mother & The Weaver: Art from the Ursula Hauser Collection at the Foundling…
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