I Here is Shepstone Road, and here is the vinegar that runs from your mouth. Here is your black family car and your father idling in the front seat. Here is his broken elbow from his recent fall, the gravel still under his skin. Here again is the apple you ate this morning when you Read More
The unexpected element of Gillian Duffy’s The Ghosting of Rabbie Burns isn’t that the two-person play successfully delivers a complete and compelling dialogue. Nor is it the fact that the jovial tone detracts not from the deeper issues of love and commitment. Rather, what surprises most is that Duffy manages to create a fully engaging Read More
Michelle Tea’s latest book, Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions and Criticisms, turns the notion of the memoir on its head. Divided into three sections – ‘Art & Music’, ‘Love & Queerness’ and ‘Writing & Life’ – the essay collection paints a non-sequential picture of Tea’s life, layered under her musings and rants about other LGBT+ artists Read More
Shrouded in darkness, the rear of the stage contains a square rug, a chest of drawers, a TV and an armchair. A spotlight picks out a small red plastic stacking chair near the stage front. A lone man in drab, loose clothes falls onto stage and throws his body around. He dances by and around Read More
Words today swerve like sweet lace, pivot like fine dandelions, as though life were an obelisk turning blue in winter dark, as though gerunds could sleigh with pretty participles as though adjectives would smoke in a dark, unknown as though language were just transparent. A see-through Norwegian melody, Mina Loy and H.D. naming Read More
I was firstly struck by the cover of this rich and densely packed collection by Trinidadian writer, Nicholas Laughlin. At first glance, the cover, simple black and white, crammed with text, looks similar to an old topographical map – lines marking out regions and boundaries. A closer look at the text and an explanation at Read More
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, joint winner of the Booker Prize 2019, was eagerly anticipated despite a high bar having already been set by its popular predecessor The Handmaid’s Tale, which encapsulated the potential consequences of suppressing women. The handmaid Offred, in her iconic white veil and red dress, became a symbol of feminism now Read More
Everything seems to be going wrong in Endland. Gods are being banished from Olympus and forced into dead-end jobs, a teenager vanishes after she uploads herself to the internet, and even the space-time continuum is in danger thanks to two alcoholic, quantum physics enthusiasts. It is a place of abuse and negligence, and all its Read More
In 1917 Sam Mendes has created an astonishing work of cinematic art through the masterful combination of continuous, single-shot cinematography by Roger Deakins; concise, effective screenplay co-written with Krysty Wilson-Cairns; and haunting, dramatic score by Thomas Newman. Mendes’ direction in this film is intense. His use of long takes and clever editing bring the viewer Read More
By its nature, as the waters of the Ocean, the extent of heaven’s bliss cannot be defined. But the sphere of human happiness is like a dew-drop clinging to a blade of grass. Vidagama Maitreya, Budugunalamkaraya (‘Beauteous Virtues of the Buddha’, 15th century). Epigraph taken from The True Paradise, Gamini Salgado. Reading and re-reading The Read More