The eyes of Mayakovsky’s lover and muse, Lily Brik, bore out at you from the cover of this important new edition of Mayakovsky’s long poem, Pro Eto. Lily Brik occurs elsewhere in the book; in the text, which she haunts, but also in the astonishing photomontages for the poem by Alexander Rodchenko, which are published […]
Archive by Author
Katyn (2007), dir. Andrzej Wajda
The iconic beginning to this film – Polish refugees run from both sides onto a bridge, one side running from the Russians, the others running from the Germans, and the equally iconic, relentless slaughter which end the film, will be well known to anyone who has looked at the reviews of this remarkable document. Equally […]
Basil Bunting, Briggflatts (Bloodaxe Books) £12.00
In 1979, Donald Davie wrote that ‘Briggflatts is where English poetry has got to, it is what English poets must assimilate and go on from.’ Why hasn’t that happened? One reason for the critical occlusion of Bunting is that late-modernism itself can be a bit of a cul-de-sac. On the DVD that accompanies the text, […]
Glenn Brown at Tate Liverpool; George Always, Portraits of George Melly by Maggi Hambling, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
The paintings in room one of Glenn Brown’s exhibition at Tate Liverpool are versions of sci-fi sublime: science fiction landscapes with cities on planets, swirling gas-clouds and nebulae with space stations. These are huge wall-sized canvases; often enlarged from small air-brush cartoons in sci-fi magazines. Brown’s debts to the romantic sublime of John Martin are […]
Three Monkeys (2008), dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
On the eve of an election, politician Servet (Ercan Keysal), falls asleep at the wheel and kills a pedestrian. He asks his driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol) who wasn’t with him at the time, to take the fall. So Eyup goes to gaol with the promise of his salary paid every month, and a lump sum […]
Six Lithuanian Poets, ed. Eugenijus Alisanka (Arc Publications) 2008, reviewed by Ewa Stanczyk
This anthology of contemporary Lithuanian poetry is a must-read for anyone interested in East European literature. The collection introduces six contemporary Lithuanian poets who mostly made their debuts after 1991 in the years of independence. It opens with Eugenijus Alisanka’s informed introduction on the development of Lithuanian literature from nineteenth century onwards. Here the editor […]
Six Polish Poets, ed. Jacek Dehnel (Arc Publications), reviewed by Ewa Stanczyk
Six Polish Poets is the second bilingual anthology of Polish poetry, published by Arc. It is also the fifth volume in the series ‘New Voices from Europe and Beyond’ which brings contemporary world poetry to the English-language readers. The book features a selection of poets who made their debuts in the past two decades; mostly, […]
Mourid Barghouti, Midnight and Other Poems (Arc Publications)
Mourid Barghouti’s first full length collection to be published in the UK is a wonderful book, sprawling, elegiac and elegant. The translation from the Arabic by Barghouti’s wife, Radwa Ashour, is mellifluous and adept, full of lovely felicities in the English, which make the poems come alive in the language they were not written in. […]
Slumdog Millionaire (2008), dir. Danny Boyle
There would be little point in using a space such as this to review a film that is being touted on the sides of buses, were it not for the overwhelming desire to correct the impression that is given on the sides of those buses. This is not a ‘feel-good’ movie! This is not to […]
Herbie Hancock at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Herbie Hancock, unlike Miles, has never been afraid to revisit his back catalogue and this Sunday’s concert in Manchester was a trip down memory lane. However, as we know, revisiting is usually rather more than revamping. This evening’s concert started with ‘Actual Proof’ from Hancock’s second Headhunters’ album, Thrust, And for a while in […]
Quiet Chaos (2008) dir. Antonio Luigi Grimaldi
While Pietro (Nanni Moretti) and his brother Carlos (Alessandro Gassman) are playing a keenly contested game of beach tennis, they hear cries from the sea. Ignoring advice from men on the shore that the sea is too dangerous, they plunge in and save two drowning women. When they return the women to the beach, the […]
Chris Woods, Dangerous Driving (Comma Press), reviewed by Lynne Taylor
This is the second collection from Chris Woods following Recovery. In Dangerous Driving, he continues to observe, looking inwards as well as out. In his pared-down style, Woods journeys using unassuming vocabulary. The reader is a happy passenger: has a feeling of being in the safe hands of someone who is confident of his vehicle […]
Anne Rouse, The Upshot: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books)
Anne Rouse’s The Upshot comprises poems from her first three books, presented in reverse order of publication. At the front of the book, there is a group of new poems that she has called ‘The Divided’. Rouse has always been a miniaturist; her poems seldom stray over the page, and this tendency has become more […]
Sophie Ryder and Isamu Noguchi, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
It was a bright sunny Saturday for a change, this summer, and the main car park was full at Bretton Hall, home of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The terrace of the main restaurant was full, too, and the wasps were out. Sophie Ryder’s Lady Hare sculptures are oddly ambivalent things. Barry Flanagan’s series of hare […]
Jar City (2006), dir. Baltasar Kormakur
Scandanavian crime writing may have been initiated by Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow but it’s now a complete industry from the phenomenally successful Henning Mankell through to Ake Edwardson, Arnaldur Indridason and others. Indridason’s novel Jar City has now been in adapted for the cinema by the director Baltasar Kormakur. Kormakur had some success with […]