CHRIS SEARLE welcomes a startling vision of contemporary Newport from a veteran photographer of the British working class
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Poetic dream that ended in nightmare
CALUM BARNES recommends an account of the tragic end of the brief period when writers took power in 1918 Bavaria
Utopian dreamer: Kurt Eisner
ANGUS REID recommends a very unusual documentary: a love story between two disillusioned journalists
In verse and polemic, the bard points out that he is a poet and musician, not a political party
MARIA DUARTE, JAMES WALSH and ANDY HEDGECOCK review The Invite, My Father’s Island, Nirvanna: the Band, the Show, the Movie, and Oh My Goodness!
PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Dreamers
by Volker Weidermann
(Pushkin Press, £16.99)
PLATO infamously wanted to banish poets from his republic. What happens, though, when poets end up in charge of one? Volker Weidermann's Dreamers, a moving, novelistic retelling of the short-lived Bavarian Council Republic founded in 1918, provides an account of the time this briefly became a reality.
With a cast drawn from the pantheon of 20th century German writers, including Rainer Maria Rilke, Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann, it brilliantly resurrects an oft-forgotten episode when poets took power and were no longer merely the ”unacknowledged legislators of the world,” as Shelley once claimed.
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