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JAN WOOLF finds out where she came from and where she’s going amid Pete Townsend’s tribute to 1970s youth culture
Growing Up Is For Adults
by Gordon Scapens
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
MARJORIE MAYO, JOHN GREEN and MARIA DUARTE review Sudan, Remember Us, From Hilde, With Love, The Road to Patagonia, and F1
MARIA DUARTE recommends the very human portrayal of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist in Putin’s Russia
This is a remarkable set of hop hip, salsa, reggae, soul, cumbia and traditional Mexican music finds TONY BURKE
MATTHEW HAWKINS enjoys the perverse jocularity, depraved glamour and inner turbulence of the Tate gallery’s tribute to Leigh Bowery
Before I knew about war
we were fearless soldiers
advancing across childhood.
Before I knew about death
I knew how to fall
from Saturday morning films.
Before I knew about fear
I was such a hero
that always won the day.
Before I knew about guilt
life was never real
in stretched imagination.
I learnt real horror later
in the bloody cost of war
remembered now with poppies,
and yearly commemoration.
We fail to learn a lesson
again and again and again
because of who we are
and the lies we live by.
The real truth knows us.
Gordon Scapens was born in Liverpool in 1934. Now lives in Preston. He won first prize in the Brian Nesbit Poetry Award. His latest collection is History Doesn’t Die (Caparison, 2024).
Poetry submissions to thursdaypoems@gmail.com
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