SIMON PARSONS applauds an original, visual and movement-based take on the birth and death of a relationship
Latest editorial
Torchbearer for Puerto Rican liberation
JOHN GREEN’s palette is tickled by useful information leavened by amusing and unusual anecdotes, incidental gossip and scare stories
The bard contemplates X — anti-human vomit soup with dog shit croutons — and the Tory recycling bin that is Reform
ALAN MORRISON recommends an outstanding and timely anthology of poems that reflect the experience and consequences of African migration
BINOY KAMPMARK examines the food racket as evidenced by the recent promotion of Italian cuisine to the status of ‘intangible national heritage’
FIONA O’CONNOR and MARIA DUARTE review State of Statelessness, Rental Family, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and The Rip
The Tertiary (Lo Terciario)
by Raquel Salas Rivera
(Timeless, Infinite Light, £12.99)
THE PROMESA (promise) — Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act of 2016 — is a US federal law and The Tertiary is a poetic response to it, seeking answers to the endemic political corruption and widespread poverty stemming from US neocolonialism.
“I remember that first time I read marx,/i wanted to be marx,” writes its author Raquel Salas Rivera, a queer poet who offers a decolonising critique and a reconsideration of Marx. He dissects Puerto Rico’s neocolonial present in thrilling language that is luminous, potent and rich.
Similar stories
This is poetry in paint, spectacular but never spectacle for its own sake, writes JAN WOOLF
Travelogue/reportage by Argentinean Maria Sonia Cristoff, and poetry by Peruvian Gaston Fernandez and Puerto Rican Cristina Perez Diaz
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
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes two exhibitions that blur the boundaries between art and community engagement