The bard pays homage to his two muses: his wife and his football club
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21st Century Poetry
Three great new collections about the unknowable past and the unknown future
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by an incoherent show that fails to question stereotypical assumptions about the Soviet Union
JOHN McINALLY welcomes a rigorous class analysis of the history and exploitation of sectarianism by the Scottish ruling elite
WILL STONE, JAMES WALSH and MARIA DUARTE review Souleymane’s Story, Sunlight, Good Fortune, and After The Hunt
ALEX HALL recommends an exhaustive investigation of the means by which the Starmer faction assassinated the left
DAVID MORGAN recommends a refreshingly inspiring novel that features encounters with some tremendous women
JENNY MITCHELL’S new book, Map of a Plantation (Indigo Dreams, £11) is a hugely ambitious exploration of traumatic historical memory, a powerful and painful attempt to imagine life on a Jamaica slave-plantation – slaves and slave-owners, masters and mistresses.
Mitchell describes the systemic brutality and systematic cruelty of the plantation economy as seen through the eyes of unnamed slave women:
“first day in the fields/ forced into a row / women chop the cane hands turn into blood / legs / dead weight / each step a punishment / not walking this but crawl / bundle on my head bones crack / haul a bundle to the cart / stop / breathe / eyes close / overseer calls me / beast / whips a fire on my back.”
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