MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
Latest editorial
Poetry of praise and protest
RUTH AYLETT recommends a new collection that is direct and open to all, both conversational and radical
Jackie Kay MBE, Chancellor of the University of Salford, April 29 2015
[University of Salford Press Office/CC] ![REBELS: Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar in Nadia Fall’s powerful debut feature Brides [Pic: IMDb]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2025-09/round%20up%20web_0.jpg.webp?itok=41xI6jhN)
MARY CONWAY recommends an early Shakespearean tragedy that feels so contemporary that it mirrors our daily news
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by a new play that loses its drama amid the moral dilemma of re-settling children in the aftermath of WWII
Acclaimed as a masterpiece when it premiered, this study of story-telling in an Irish pub more than lives up to expectations, says MARY CONWAY
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a comedy that dives deep into Liverpool’s divided loyalties
May Day
By Jackie Kay, Picador
£10.99
Jackie Kay has been a leading British poet for a good 30 years and she was Scotland’s Makar (poet laureate) from 2016-21. Her poetry is direct and open to all, and her voice is distinctive: both conversational and radical.
May Day is her latest collection. Its title has two meanings, represented by two poems, one called MayDay, and the other May Day. The first is a signal of distress at the recent deaths of her parents, while the second is a celebration of their activist lives as committed socialists and trade unionists, including many years in the British Communist Party.
Similar stories
A pamphlet by British Latinx poet Patrick Romero McCafferty, poetry by Anglo-Argentinian Miguel Cullen, and a book of conjuring poems by Mexican Pedro Serrano
An outstanding novel by Chilean writer and activist Pedro Lemebel, a poetry pamphlet by Venezuelan Natasha Tiniacos, and a children’s book of haikus singing the beauty of Cuba
RUTH AYLETT reviews two books of poetry, one by the Iranian American Marjorie Lofti, the other by the British Lebanese Omar Sabbagh
HARRY GALLAGHER relishes a poet who bares her soul under a microscope’s lens