The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Hell’s kitchen workers
ALISTAIR FINDLAY introduces the work of the four women poets whose work will feature on our pages this month
21st century poetry
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
CHOOSING poems for the weekly Thursday Poem slot and monthly review hinges on what arrives via email, new collections, gleanings from leftist culture magazines and broad left anthologies.
My previous reviews and selections for April and July both featured single collections by men, but this month it’s all women poets, varying in age, style, publishing history and topic and who collectively contradict the kind of stereotypes that once confined women’s writing to “ecriture feminine,” taken apart in Elma Mitchell’s 1967 poem Thoughts After Ruskin, and available online:
Women reminded him of lilies and rosies,/ Me they remind rather of blood and soap,/ Armed with a warm rag, assaulting noses,/ Ears, neck, mouth and all the secret places:// Armed with a sharp knife, cutting up liver,/ Holding hearts to bleed under a running tap,/ Gutting and stuffing, pickling and preserving,/ Scalding, blanching, broiling, pulverizing,/ - All the terrible chemistry of their kitchen.
More from this author
ALISTAIR FINDLAY welcomes a collection of essays from one of the cultural left’s most respected speakers and activists
ALISTAIR FINDLAY welcomes a fine collection of football poems that celebrate a generational shift in both the sport and the culture
ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends the first representative selection in English of the poetry of the Soviet war correspondent Ilya Ehrenburg
ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends a brilliant collection of poems written to accompany stunning images of the Miners’ strike