SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
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The last stand of the soul
RUTH AYLETT recommends a remarkable collection that is collective in its grief and serious in its demand for solidarity
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
ALEX HALL is intrigued by a detailed history of Gaza that demonstrates its historic resilience and changing economy
RON JACOBS welcomes the long overdue translation of an epic work that chronicles resistance to fascism during WWII
MAYER WAKEFIELD is chilled by the co-dependency of two lost souls as portrayed by German communist playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz
The Star's critics BRETT GREGORY, JOHN GREEN, MICHAEL BONCZA and ANGUS REID review The Stimming Pool, Misericordia, La Cocina, Irena’s Vow, and The End
CHRIS MOSS welcomes a radical history that brings marginalised stories and overlooked people and agencies to the centre
Out of Gaza – New Palestinian Poetry
Edited by Alan Morrison and Atef Alshaer, Smokestack Books, £9.99
THIS anthology of 14 Palestinian poets is worth the read for its introduction alone. Atef Alshaer, a senior lecturer at University of Westminster, edited the collection along with Alan Morrison, and they ask the obvious question: how can Palestinians write poetry in the face of the Gaza genocide? Their answer: “A duty, because it records the last stand of the soul as it stares death and destruction in the face.”
Two of the anthology poets have been murdered. Rafaat Alareer a leading Gazan poet, writer, professor, and activist, was specifically targeted in December 2023 for a sarcastic online comment about the wholly invented October 7 atrocity of “an Israeli baby burned alive in an oven.”
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RUTH AYLETT recommends two anthologies: one that bears witness to refugee and immigrant experiences, and the other to our political relationship to water
A remarkable posthumous collection of poetry and other writings is a tragic document of genocide, and a beacon of hope for a Palestinian future, says HENRY BELL
Legendary poetry publisher Smokestack Books will cease operations by the end of the year. JOHN GREEN looks back at its achievements
by Hiba Abu Nada