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GORDON PARSONS recommends an entertaining account of the years between Germany’s defeat in WWI and Hitler’s seizure of power
Four poems by Pippa Little
Well Versed is edited by JODY PORTER
MIGUEL YOSHIDA explains the evolution and influence of the Cuban Casa De Las Americas in joining culture to the revolutionary struggle
ANDY HEDGECOCK is charmed by a skilful adaptation of Tove Jansson’s lyrical portrait of three generations of a family, overcoming grief
ALEX HALL treads warily through a messy, dialectical struggle fought in the mundane machinery of driving licences, criminal law, and birth registries
MICHAL BONCZA, FIONA O’CONNOR, JAMES WALSH and ANGUS REID review Atlas of Disappearance, Love Me Tender, Bouchra, and This Tempting Madness
Flitting between myth and the modern world, Medusa is determined to steer clear of human affairs. When her resolve crumbles, the result is petrifying in every sense
Directions
You go through the wall:
the Remembering’s on your left,
widows’ dahlias, match-wood crosses –
then John William Robson gone slant, lost
in the pit disaster,
across from him the black yew
with rats in its roots,
a trembling of needles
for they’re gone too fast
to catch their faces:
keep to the path.
Here’s willow for a sailor’s concern,
knuckles tapping at his mossy anchor,
the scrubbed marble doorstep
with its jar of snowdrops for an infant
unnamed and dead two lifetimes over.
I walk here all weathers, in rhododendrons’
Popish purple, blackberries’ wet blue
that get picked at night, in secret.
Winter now, all stab-sticks in black ground,
I’ve nobody here. Years ago
it was all running feet,
unearthly calls, kids in their dens
singing on glue like foxes,
but still I came anyway.
For some it’s a shortcut.
I’ll see you again.
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by Mary Gilonne
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
by Rosie Jackson