ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes two exhibitions that blur the boundaries between art and community engagement
Northern rock
HARRY GALLACHER relishes a poet who takes no shit
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews I Am Martin Parr, September Says, The Monkey, and The Gorge
RITA DI SANTO applauds a touching and witty opener that touches a hot topic in Germany: the future of the immigrant population
SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
PAUL FOLEY recommends an extraordinary double bill that packs a punch and leaves you reeling
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play about AI that results in a deadening disconnect for its audience
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
Gaps Made of Static
Penny Blackburn, Yaffle Press, £11.50
PENNY BLACKBURN, were you to break her in half a la the old “Blackpool rock” gag, her remains would read — much like mine — Northerner, right through, top to bottom.
Fiercely proud of her roots, steeped as she is the traditions of working-class life in her native Huddersfield, the wanderings of her pen are spread fairly evenly between the heavy engineering heritage of the north, and that hoary old subject which remains rather more difficult to pin down: poetry based on the rich and varied everyday lives of ordinary people.
Published by Yorkshire-based Yaffle Press, a cursory flick through this collection’s pages reveals its heart to be equal parts tough/tender. To reach behind the rather fetching front cover is to inhabit a museum world of cobbles, mineshafts, railway cuttings, pylons, Roman walls, boatyards and their blackened rivers. Here be ghosts.
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The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
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