CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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Personal, political, powerful
Poets and editors rate the collections which have made a big impression on them over the last 12 months
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
New releases from Javon Jackson, IZE Trio, and Mal Waldron Trio
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
JO BELL
FOUR books, each surprising in a different way, address power and the personal in memorable style. Steve Ely’s Englaland (Smokestack) puts muscle and politics back into poetry, swaggering from battlefield to nightclub with the bloody grin of a class warrior.
Jonathan Davidson’s Humfrey Coningsby (Valley) is a more gentlemanly soldier — a discreet time traveller, a mercenary, a swiver.
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From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry