The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Letters From Latin America
Reviews of poetry collections by Maia Elsner and Andres N Ordorica
elsner
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
OVERRUN BY WILD BOARS (Flipped Eye, £6,95) is British Latinx author Maia Elsner’s debut poetry collection. Multilayered and ambitious, it explores the nuances of family histories, migration, belonging, genocide and love.
The poet, who was born in London to Mexican and Polish Jewish parents, manages to create a work that is as lyrically beautiful as it is formally exciting — it encompasses elegies and ghazals to sestinas, sonnets and poems inspired by art and architecture.
The book is filled with vibrant coloured birds, with Polish and Mexican stories of loss, strength and redemption, as well as explorations of what it means to live between cultures and languages.
More from this author
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
LEO BOIX selects the best books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction written by Latinx and Latin American authors published this year
Mexican Yuri Herrera’s novel about Benito Juarez in New Orleans, and poetry by Mexican Fabio Morabito and Argentine Sergio Chejfec
Femicide and the search for justice in Mexico: a book by Cristina Rivera Garza; and a travel book through Latin America by Welsh poet Richard Gwyn