Callow The girl who brought the tea trolley leaned over their mother’s chair. ‘You’ve got visitors today, Mrs Lindley,’ she said. ‘that’s nice, isn’t it?’ Their mother tilted an emaciated face in her direction. ‘I’m slim now,’ she said. ‘You are,’ said the girl, whose name, according to her badge, was Jade. ‘More than […]
Commission
Commission Jameni, I lost the silver bracelet my nyanya had given me when I was a little girl when I heard the news that he would appear on the Goldenberg Commission. I ran around our small shamba and through the fence to his clan on the next shamba to tell everybody and the bracelet fell […]
The Art of the Body: An Extract
Chapter 1: An Extract from The Art of the Body by Alex Allison Maintaining one person’s dignity comes nearly always at the expense of someone else’s. I have learned this for you. My morning ritual begins in the bathroom. At the sink, I wet my hands and lather, dancing my fingers through their trained routine: […]
Claiming Home
Claiming Home Under light drizzle, a cable TV reporter stood at the corner of Burdett Avenue and Quadra Street, leaning onto her camera like a pilgrim resting on her staff, alert for signs of movement. “They have a spokesperson, but so far I haven’t gotten her to talk with me,” she whispered. When a […]
(Not) Keeping Kosher
(Not) Keeping Kosher By Sharon Goldberg I was eighteen and a freshman at Northwestern University when I ate my first slice of pepperoni pizza. That saucy crust smothered with mozzarella cheese and topped with bright red chili-peppered circles marked the beginning of my deliberate departure from Kashrut—the Jewish dietary laws with which I was raised. […]
Two Poems
The Comeback There I was hunched over a canso in the aparthotel, the day grey, the year unclear and the bed empty. A city again, jackhammers and cranes, the district repeating itself, rising from the mud for the umpteenth time. My love, I began, what have I done to wake up again? From the tangle […]
Three Poems
Second Sight Some lads see a gap where others see traffic, shirtless stroll across immune to horns and gestures. In clubs they take their chances with promises and boasts. They meet their matches. But I see ghost cars on an empty road. The days of taking off my top for football in the park, […]
Two Poems
Ms Mott Appoints a Future Bot as Apostle Because you don’t have cells that will forget, because I trust that you’ll uphold all that I ask you to uphold, that you will not reshape, distort or falsify to serve a purpose much at odds with one it seems would never harm a soul, it is […]
Three Poems
Men More Comfortable in a Flat Back Four About war, they say, there is nothing new to expect from its aftermath. It is as common to come home to a performance in both song and dance of long narrative poems, as it is to come home to silence and recrimination. It is the conduct of […]
Two Poems
Hernia Perhaps the inguinal canal was weakened by the piano we hauled down three flights with a chime and a plink, out to the lorry where we rolled and smoked a spliff. Or compromised by those concrete slabs I lifted and laid with dad. Or charcoal bags, hoisted and hefted into the van, delivered to […]
Three Poems
Poems from Squid Squad #25 As she walks in a widening circle, Lola Wheeler leaves a spiral of footprints in the snow. Bradley Ridley feeds the chickens the chestnuts. Hank Strunk drums on an upturned bucket. Any metaphor is a metaphor for the idea of metaphor, Natalie Chatterley mutters. Chaffinches chew at the chocolate sultanas. […]
Uncles
Uncles I went into the living room suddenly to find one of my little nephews scrubbing his arms with an eraser – huge livid weals had formed. I asked him what he was doing and he replied he was trying to rub himself out so he could be drawn all over again. I said it […]
Two Poems
I Am There was a time he could fix anything – opening the Telegraph on his iPad – on a tractor himself – scraping his mother’s jam on his toast – everything was done by hand – the printing press is dead – with a gripe, and they’d pile the shit up on the midden […]
Under the Bridges
Under the Bridges 1. I’m growing under bridges. Looking up at bridges, looking through one bridge to the next. Different shapes making different shapes. Trying to name all the shapes but having to make up names for new shapes. Octohedragon, climbadecadon, redrangle. The bridges don’t look like they move, but they do. Cars and trucks […]
Two Poems
Desire …Now women are at their foulest, / But men are weak since they are parched in the head and knees / By Sirius… Alcaeus Outside is that summer which we longed for on winter nights from underneath our layers of eiderdown, remembering the sudden dawns and sultry weather, the freedom of bare legs, the […]
Excerpt from Forgotten Work
Excerpt from Forgotten Work Like all young bands, they bandied names about All evening. Lou, the lead guitar, liked “Lout,” A word that clubbed you like a cord of wood. It’s dumb, said Lou, but arty dumb, like blood- Smeared dolls deployed as drumsticks—Henry Rollins Does Dada. Jim, on keys, preferred “The Dolphins,” After […]
Three Poems
Home Like a wary traveller suddenly at the door, she’d ask about the corncrake and if I ever heard its call. It was, I used to think, a simple question – nothing cosmic, deep or existential – she was, I just assumed, adjusting to the time to which she had returned. To tell the truth, […]
Three Poems
Rehearsal They look like they could be going somewhere. The bass player’s bringing everything he owns. The cellos and bass park closest to the door. There’s a list of their names, a place for coats. I can’t help thinking of toothbrushes, soap, honey wrapped for the journey in clothes, the instruments left at home […]
Two Poems
Louise Tonight you have set out all the keys on the oak table. They lie on the grained and pitted surface, each with its own design, finials of love-knots, triquetras, plain oval loops. You align them carefully, crosswise to the grain, you lay them out as you would lay out the cards for a reading, […]
Blue
Blue Months on it recurs in disparate forms, the famous blue of those ubiquitous chairs in orderly rows, sun loungers and parasols, striped blue on bone white sand, the graduated blue of the middle of August reflected in the tinted lenses of new sunglasses bought to replace a pair left at home. Certain tiles – […]
Pharricide (Confingo) by Vincent De Swarte, translated by Nicholas Royle. Reviewed by Richard Clegg
Pharricide (Confingo) by Vincent De Swarte, translated by Nicholas Royle. This short novel is a terrific read. It is always good to find a new author and I must admit this was all new to me. Vincent de Swarte wrote several books for children and five for adults. “Pharricide,” published in 1998, won the Prix […]
Three Poems by Xi Chuan, translated by Lucas Klein
Eight Fragments 1. Which Pornographic Peach Blossom Which pornographic peach blossom dreamt of me biting into this juicy peach and thought up this question in the orchard of the Queen of the West? I, the Monkey King, stole in here—and now I must steal out. 2. Facing the Sea Facing the sea, back toward […]
Three Pamphlets | reviewed by Ian Pople
Martina Evans, Michèle Roberts, Denise Saul, Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch | Speaking Again: Poems for International Women’s Day | Rack Press: £5 Even though each poet in Speaking Again: Poems for International Women’s Day has a slim selection, four quite individual voices are present in this Rack Press pamphlet for International Women’s day. The importance of those […]
Imarhan | Night & Day Cafe | reviewed by David Adamson
Imarhan | Night & Day Cafe | Manchester: August 6th The Night & Day café looks like a cross between Cheers and the red-lit and threatening open-mic nights from every country music biopic. Throughout the decade I’ve been coming in here, it’s never changed. A while back it obviously made a series of personal and […]
Karen Russell | Orange World | reviewed by Livi Michael
Karen Russell | Orange World | Penguin Random House: £14.99 There are readers who feel a certain prejudice against special effects. Who might read Beloved for instance, as a historical novel, and be more moved by the story of Sethe, and the atrocities of slavery, than the device of the dead infant who is brought […]
Rebecca Goss | Girl | reviewed by Eleanor Ward
Rebecca Goss | Girl | Carcanet Press: £9.99 “I spent the day being Rachel” is what Rebecca Goss tells us a few poems into her third collection Girl. It is one example of the many identities of “girls” we are to meet over the collection, and the many understandings of her own identity in the […]
Keith Hutson | Baldwin’s Catholic Geese | reviewed by Ian Pople
Keith Hutson | Baldwin’s Catholic Geese | Bloodaxe Books: £12 A book of mainly sonnets about, mostly long dead, music hall performers may not sound very entertaining… or, actually, it does, and is. But the point of the book is not only the recalling and regaling of lives which the vast majority of us are […]
Love Supreme Jazz Festival, reviewed by Ian Pople
Love Supreme Jazz Festival 2019 | Glynde Place | July 5th to 7th On record, Manchester’s own Go Go Penguin can seem occasionally samey, even cloying. The punched, ‘epic’ chords that pianist Chris Illingworth’s right hand deploys can feel a little coercive, the rhythmic push a little determined. Live, however, they prove the point. The […]
Sally Wen Mao | Oculus | reviewed by Ian Pople
Sally Wen Mao | Oculus | Graywolf Press: $16.00 There’s a driven intensity to many of the poems Sally Wen Mao’s new volume. And this intensity is true even as she moves through a range of figures from popular culture from Anna May Wong to Janelle Monáe and Solange. In particular, Anna May Wong, who […]
Nina Bogin | Thousandfold | reviewed by Ian Pople
Nina Bogin | Thousandfold | Carcanet: £9.99 There is a lot of snow towards the start of Thousandfold, Nina Bogin’s fourth collection. And even when there isn’t snow, there’s snow, as in the beginning of ‘The Dream’ part 1, of Bogin’s sequence, ‘Visit to a Friend’, ‘I take a snow shovel, a laundry rack and […]
Beverley Bie Brahic | The Hotel Eden | reviewed by Maryam Hessavi
Beverley Bie Brahic | The Hotel Eden | Carcanet: £9.99 And I carve out the bruises, the fine-bore Tunnels of worms. I slice the fruit thinly, until the white flesh Is almost translucent, I arrange the slices in the new pot from Ikea (I burned the old one), Add a trickle of water And […]
Jenny Xie | Eye Level | reviewed by Ian Pople
Jenny Xie | Eye Level | Graywolf Press: $16.00 The blurbs on the back of Jenny Xie’s debut volume, Eye Level, include the New York Review of Books, Dan Chiasson in The New Yorker, Tracy K Smith and Brenda Shaughnessy. This first book has clearly hit the sweet spot as far as the reviewers are […]
Howard Jones | Bridgewater Hall | May 30th
Howard Jones | Bridgewater Hall | May 30th Thursday night at Bridgewater hall saw synth-pop star Howard Jones return to Manchester in support of his new album Transform and to mark the 35th anniversary of his double-platinum debut 1984 album Human Lib. Jones, no stranger to Manchester, studied piano at the Royal Northern College of […]
Forrest Gander | Be With | reviewed by Ian Pople
Forrest Gander | Be With | New Directions: $16.95 On the back of Forrest Gander’s new collection, the Washington Post is quoted with the comment, ‘A complex reading experience punctuated by intense beauty.’ It clearly takes a certain level of honesty to place such an ambivalent comment as part of a blurb. But there is […]
Ken Smith | Collected Poems | reviewed by Ian Pople
Ken Smith | Collected Poems | Bloodaxe Books £14.99 The slight sense of a jostling masculinity in Ken Smith’s poetry might be part of the reason that it is often described as ‘muscular’. In part, this jostling feels as though it rises from the abundant contradictions of his life and manifested in the poetry; that […]