I carry the war in my womb. At night it kicks and sings stories of the first night that war came calling. In the first lines of Songs My Enemy Taught Me, Joelle Taylor sets the reader on a journey that begins with her own early experience of abuse, and travels across the globe into Read More
I can only give you back what you imagine. (‘The Fluffer Talks of Eternity’) It’s true, every poem in Useless Landscape gives the reader only what they can imagine. However, in reality Powell gives his readers anything and everything they can imagine. Across its 100 pages, this collection surprises the reader at every turn of Read More
There is a cyclone fence between ourselves and the slaughter behind it we hover in a calm protected world like netted fish, exactly like netted fish. It is either the beginning or the end of the world, and the choice is ourselves or nothing. (‘Ourselves or Nothing’) Journalist, academic, memoir-writer, editor, poet and human rights’ Read More
Rachel Mann’s A Kingdom of Love is a collection of incantatory free verse that leaves a pattern of allusions for readers with religious inclinations to discover. The sensual and intellectual writing within demonstrates what language can do when tackling weighty issues such as the presence of God, the reality of death, suffering and love. In Read More
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