MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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‘Poetry voice’ needs an accent on class
TIM WELLS: Stand Up and Spit
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
“ENJOYABLE as she is in performance, Louise Bennett’s range is often restricted to topicality and journalism,” a West Indian schools anthology from 1971 notes on Louise Bennett’s poetry.
It sees as a weakness the very strength of her work. She wrote, and performed, in dialect and this put a crick in the neck of the starched collars.
Bennett wrote in an authentic voice, a witty and at times subversive one, and she inspired poets such as Michael Smith and Linton Kwesi Johnson who continue to influence poetry, particularly political poetry, in Britain and the Caribbean today.
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