I Have Been Thinking of You So Loudly
I have been thinking of you so loudly that perhaps as you walked down the street you turned on…
The Hyacinths
Pressed in the soil’s black web, nursed by the rough offhand embrace of frost, the hyacinths turn in their…
Zoffany, Gilbert and George
Johann Zoffany RA: Society Observed, Royal Academy of Arts, until 10 June 2012 Gilbert and George: London Pictures, White…
In Our Own Hard Times
A Mutual Friend: Poems for Charles Dickens, edited by Peter Robinson, Two Rivers Press, 160pp, £10 (paperback) It is…
Wandering Star
A review of Joseph Roth’s letters edited by Michael Hofmann
Looking Outside Oneself
A Thorn in the Flesh, Eddie Linden, Hearing Eye, 52pp, £7.50 (paperback) Echo Soundings, John Weston, Shoestring Press, 88pp,…
The Politics of Humour
David Shrigley: Brain Activity, Hayward Gallery, until 13 May 2012 From the steel casket that is the Hayward Gallery…
A Collective Undertaking
Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, British Museum, until 15 April 2012 The current ‘Hajj’ exhibition at the…
Damascus, Aleppo and their ‘Battered Caravanserais’
The horror of what can only be considered nascent civil war in Syria, the frustration of the international community’s…
Animal Avenue: Surviving a Third-World Megacity
Had Darwin lived long enough to visit twenty-first-century Manila he may have been intrigued by Katipunan. Day and night…
No More Coteries
Literary London’s reviewers united to empty a bucket of ordure over Richard Bradford’s Martin Amis: The Biography last November.…
The Poetry of Egon Schiele
An introduction to three poems in translation by the Austrian painter, Egon Schiele
‘No-Management Style’: Boris’s Lack of Impact at City Hall
As the 2012 mayoral contest enters its final stages, it is tempting to play up the differences between the…
Neville Cardus: Writing with the Wayward Charms of Schubert
‘That Mozart was born once, and once and for all, is a happening and consummation which beggars understanding and…
Iraq: Now We Must Learn Our Lesson
It is election year in the USA and, I suppose, we can only expect even less statesmanship than normal…
The Politics of Polonius
‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’ This was a phrase I remember my grandfather using years ago. As…
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…
Syria
A poem after Eugenio Montale
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