LEO BOIX recommends a ravishing, full-bodied drama about the intensely demanding and emotional art of Kabuki theatre
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Neither here nor there
Two accomplished collections from Grace Nichols and Louisa Adjoa Parker explore what it means to live between two worlds
VIVIDLY DESCRIPTIVE: Louisa Adjoa Parker
[Maisie Hill]
On the day of the election, MARTIN GOLLAN reflects on the perennial relationship between the far-right and the back-hander
MARY CONWAY is gripped by the powerful emotional journeys portrayed by the parents of the perpetrator and victims of a mass shooting
LEO BOIX reviews a novel where shadows deceive and mortality looms, and a poetry collection that refuses to dim
ROBIN STYLES welcomes a boundary pushing work of fiction exploring the life and ideas of the godmother of modernism
PAUL DONOVAN recommends an energetic adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel, that emphasises how psychiatry is a tool in the hands of a racist agenda
GRACE NICHOLS’ beautiful new collection Passport to Here and There (Bloodaxe, £9.95) is a kind of autobiography in verse.
The first part is about growing up in Guyana, where Nichols meets the ghost of her childhood, “running/with slipping shoulder-straps/and half-plaited hair/beside a brown expanse/of memorising water/and the mellow faces of wooden houses/half-hidden by a weave/of coconut, mango, guenip trees.”
There are some perfect poems here about adolescence, notably Confirmation, Spirit Rising and Sweet Fifteen: “If the leaves of my memory serve me — /That was the year my hair went beehive/the year of the kiss, touching smugly/in the mirror my bee-stung lips.”
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ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
KEVIN DONNELLY accepts the invitation to think speculatively in contemplation of representations of people of African descent in our cultural heritage
GORDON PARSONS is enthralled by an erudite and entertaining account of where the language we speak came from
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery