JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
21st Century Poetry with ANDY CROFT
New titles from Fran Lock, Richard Skinner, Tara Bergin and Mark A Murphy
NADIA JOSEPH welcomes a survey of the role that TV played in the debate over apartheid and race relations in Britain
New releases from Rosa Walton, Paul McCartney, and Aidan Thorne & Jason Ball
RON JACOBS welcomes a sharp, intelligent and witty exposé of the corruption and right-wing politics that have taken over international professional football
ALEX HALL welcomes the memoir of a prominent British academic of Ugandan/Zimbabwean heritage
JONATHAN TAYLOR reviews a collection of short stories wherein news - and the absence of news - changes lives
AFTER all those appalling, fawning poems about the monarchy (leaving some writers who should have known better looking rather foolish), it is a relief to come across Fran Lock’s Sid James at the Poetry Society:
“Cor blimey! If you’re wearing those clothes for a bet, you’ve won…Your poetry is / for rent collectors rubbing their hands at your / sorry arrears … If you’re writing that shit for a bet, / you’ve won.”
Fran Lock’s new collection Hyena! (Poetry Bus Press, Ireland, €15) is her biggest and best collection yet, a series of vivid monologues and harangues by marginal voices, loners, outsiders and outcasts, surreal and subversive.
Similar stories
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician
The Labour Party proposal to scrap benefits for those unable to work will be debated in Parliament next Tuesday, and threatens the most vulnerable in our society. ALAN MORRISON presents some responses in poetry