NICK MATTHEWS welcomes the return of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s music to the repertoire of this years’ Three Choirs Festival
The poet as lived experience expert
JOHN KENDALL HAWKINS applauds a new volume by black US poet Frederick Joseph, that is precisely cadenced and breathing with lyricism

We Alive, Beloved: Poems
Frederick Joseph, Row House, £13.06
IT’S a tough nut to crack: ever-escalating violence: war; assassination attempts; BLM protests met with batons and the same old racism; annihilations, terrorism; the US with more guns than people.
When leadership and the vigour of new ideas are needed folks are treated with the same tired bromides that didn’t work to begin with.
The UN, which was meant to be a beacon away from the darkness of interstate conflict and a reminder to co-operate in improving the commonweal of humankind, is a dud outfit.
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RUTH AYLETT recommends a remarkable collection that is collective in its grief and serious in its demand for solidarity