The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
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ALISTAIR FINDLAY welcomes a collection of essays from one of the cultural left’s most respected speakers and activists
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
The Privatisation of Poetry,
Andy Croft, Broken Sleep Books, £13.99
IN this book Andy Croft brings together 21 essays and reviews first published in the Morning Star and a wide range of literary and online magazines between 1994-2024, including the New Statesman, London Magazine, PN Review, Scratch and Thumbscrew — several at the heart of the “art” poetry establishment he criticises.
Collectively these pieces underscore the theme articulated by his friend and collaborator, the legendary popular performance poet Adrian Mitchell: “Most people ignore poetry because most poetry ignores most people.”
With Croft, Mitchell co-edited the ground-breaking left movement anthology Red Sky At Night, 2003, which reached back to Blake and the Chartists and forward to the contemporary, and which included Poet Laureates and Scottish Makars writing art poetry, certainly, but from the left.
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