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).
Troubled Paradise: Tehran’s Garden Suburb Turned into a Building Site
Revisiting her childhood quarter, Viveca Mellegård questions the direction Tehran is heading in a very personal look at developments in the Iranian capital.
Avant-Garde – What Avant-Garde?
The term ‘avant-garde’ continues to be used, in my opinion with far too much frequency, in discussions of contemporary…
What’s Missing from The Sahara
The Sahara is sui generis. The word alone is one of those rare, magical names we know even before…
Hamlet and Hamlet: ‘Sweet Prince’ or Scourge of Evil?
We have been blessed with a rich spate of Hamlets of late, a series of accounts of the title…
Dancing over the Abyss:
Nietzsche’s New Testament of the Self One must have chaos within to give birth to a dancing star. I…
The Wolves of Chernobyl
You ask about the wolves. The reports are unclear, but it is said that they are without number. When they…
Seren
In this language ‘star’: the hard ‘t’ an unlovely metallic grain, the ‘ar’ a lingering heat. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaI prefer ‘seren’: a…
The Clock of Life
Rough on my skin are the moments your absence turns more and more thin and sharp-spined are the cactuses…
Darwin in Mauritius
Of all the mysteries the elephant, he said – on whose back he took a strolling seasick ride south…
The Flame Trees of Trou aux Biches
Not wishing for a moment to be upstaged by clouds of blowsy blossom that cannot stay although they are the…
One-Armed Bandits i. m. D. P. 1950-2006
We were cutting the holly tree down to size, Lopping the branches and scything off leaves That pricked our fingers,…
Sunday
Where does my son go when he speaks in tongues? I worry for him. I want to call him…
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