MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
21st Century Poetry with ANDY CROFT
New collections from Neil Fulwood, Kevin Higgins, Clare Saponia, Nora Blascsok and Peter Godfrey
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
MAD PARADE (Smokestack Books, £7.99) by Nottingham bus driver Neil Fulwood is a collection of white-hot political satirical poems taking the piss out of some of the knaves and fools who parade their poisonous egos across the stage — like Blair, Johnson, Farage, Robinson, Starmer and Trump.
Turning his attention to “the relevance, integrity and political impact” of Change UK (remember them?), Fulwood gives us an empty page.
There is a great sequence imagining Johnson as the Fat Controller in a reboot of Thomas the Tank Engine, and Starmer as a character in Camberwick Green.
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DIANE WATT argues that while evidence of sex is not there, a 16th‑century lesbian poet could be Scotland’s answer to Gentleman Jack
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event