ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
2021 Round-up with ANDY HEDGECOCK
From poets John Cooper Clarke and Mike Garry to Jackson Browne, the magnificent Paula Rego the nail-biting, futuristic Kevin Core radio drama: Welcome to MedPatch and The American Way anthology, edited by Orsola Casagrande and Ra Page, which tackles 20 examples of US belligerence
REMARKABLE: (L to R) The Dance (1988); The Policeman's Daughter (1987)
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
POETRY in Performance: John Cooper Clarke/Mike Garry. I’ve been hooked on Cooper Clarke’s acerbic, melodic and riotously funny poetry since my teens, when he battled a hostile and baffled audience as the support act for Be Bop Deluxe.
Forty-three years later, his performance was as brilliantly shambolic as ever, peppered with jokes blending compassion and comic cruelty with the same energy and panache as his poems.
His obsessions are pop culture, urban decay and the absurdities of the human condition; his influences are rap, the American beats and the wordplay of Roger McGough.
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