Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Abstract poems that fail to get under your skin
None of the poets in this collection reveal any understanding whatsoever of the politics involved or the context, writes JOHN GREEN
snow
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
Disbelief: 100 Russian Anti-War Poems
Edited by Julia Nemirovskaya
Smokestack Books £9.19
THE Russians have an admirable track record of anti-war poetry, based on the devastation its people suffered during the last century from the many invasions. I was therefore intrigued to hear about this new book of 100 anti-war poems from Smokestack which also has an admirable track record of internationalism in its publications list.
I was, however, seriously disappointed with this one. More than half of the poets represented live outside Russia or Ukraine, several in the US or Israel and the poems, by and large, reflect that distance.
Whereas earlier Soviet poets, just like our own WWI poets, knew first-hand what war was like and could express it viscerally in compelling and powerful imagery, in this collection the experience feels shred-bare and second hand, written at a distance; the poems are abstract and fail to get under your skin.
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