MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
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
Swell
Maria Ferguson, Penguin, £10.99
ALL poetry must come in some way from the personal experience of the person who writes it, but using your own life directly as raw material is very much the way many poets write currently. In Swell, Maria Ferguson presents a chunk of her life, from lovers and singledom through a miscarriage, to a successful pregnancy and a child.
Feminists argue that “the personal is political” — that patriarchy and gender-oppression are illuminated through the specific details of a woman’s life; and that a woman’s body is as fit a topic for poetry as nature or romantic love. These are also topics that allow women readers to feel their own experience is seen and valued. How far does Swell meet these objectives?
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