ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Golden fleecing
PAUL LAUGHLIN welcomes a collection whose central issues embrace class, unemployment and the benefits system
THE STATE v THE PEOPLE: (left-right) Dr Larch Maxey, Extinction Rebellion's co-founder Roger Hallam and Mike Lynch-White outside Isleworth Crown Court in London, after they received a suspended sentence, for allegedly trying to shut down Heathrow Airport with small toy drones in September 2019. Hallam and Maxey were each sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for 18 months. Lynch-White was handed 17 months, suspended for 18 months
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Rag Argonauts
Alan Morrison, Caparison Press, £12
RAG ARGONAUTS is Alan Morrison’s 12th volume of poetry. Over the course of that sustained output he has perfected a style that is as comfortable with longer-form poems as it is with shorter lyrics, that encompasses historical and political themes and employs a broad range of references and allusions to foreground the poems.
The title of the new collection sets us on a voyage that traverses several time periods and locations, during which we encounter various real and mythological figures.
Early in the collection Hauntology is nostalgic for 1970s Britain with its “anoraks/ & balaclava helmets, the high-backed bikes;/ the characterful, curvaceous cars more varied in shape & colour—like wheeling sweets;/ chilled milk in glass bottles, chocolate bars in paper wrappers, Lucozade in squeaky orange cellophane” but what the poem grieves for most of all is “the future/ that we were anticipating, the authentic/ tomorrow of matt & meritocracy, mutual/ improvement, cooperativeness, progressive/ ideas, transgressive television, Play For Today,/ punk’s political music—all abruptly aborted.”
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