MARIA DUARTE, JAMES WALSH and ANDY HEDGECOCK review The Invite, My Father’s Island, Nirvanna: the Band, the Show, the Movie, and Oh My Goodness!
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Landscapes laden with history
21st Century Poetry with Andy Croft
PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Full of mysterious religious references and radical sound design, the Scottish duo’s new offering is candidate for album of the year, suggests SIMON DUFF
MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
STUART LAYCOCK visited Bosnia seven times with a medical charity during the civil wars in Yugoslavia and Zone: Poems of the Bosnian War (Mica Press, £7) recalls his experiences in a country “heavy with history and death.../where the 20th century stops/where it slumps into piled earth grave/wooden marker post thrust/stake-like into its vampire heart.”
Those and other lines exemplify how Laycock is especially good at describing the bleak details of a landscape transformed by war:
“The lamp-post is/a thing of almost strange beauty,/something that belongs perhaps/in a plush West End art gallery,/or a fine white-walled museum./Transformed by the/frontline’s flying metal/from solid pillar to a/delicate lace-like structure... pierced/time and time again/by bullets and shells.”
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