GLENN BURGESS suggests that, despite his record in Spain, Orwell’s enduring commitment to socialist revolution underpins his late novels
Latest editorial
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
‘NO TO WAR, snow grafitti on a housing estate in Petrozavodsk, March 2022
[Pic: Katja Zlatya/CC] 
CHRISTOPHER POLLARD explains how and why neoliberalism adopted the racist agenda common to the populist right of today
SYLVIA HIKINS recommends a sweeping survey of the world's biggest desert and the people who live there
GUILLERMO THOMAS is persuaded by a scathing critique of the Church of England and its embeddedness in imperialism
MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Materialists, Unmoored, Together, and Bambi: A Tale of Life in The Woods
TONY BURKE revels in the publication of previously unreleased tracks by the great US folksinger
GORDON PARSONS endures heavy rock punctuated by Shakespeare, and a delighted audience
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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