GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
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Page-turning pleasures
Fellow poets tell ANDY CROFT what collections they couldn't put down in the last 12 months
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
ANDY HEDGECOCK welcomes an accessible - and optimistic - take on our relationship to new technology
JOHN GREEN suggests that a new, biased, and highly readable re-hash of the story of the Cambridge Five be taken with a large pinch of salt
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a timely reminder of the long history of protests and the outdoor spaces in which they takes place
Stephanie Bowgett
The Raven and the Laughing Head (Calder Valley) is Mark Hinchliffe’s first collection and he starts with the familiar and then spins it in the natural and spiritual world, weaving reality with ancient myth.
His syntax and vocabulary are deceptively simple but layered with ancient mythologies — Sioux, Green man, Gilgamesh — with the most commonplace given complexity and dignity. People interact with lions, ravens, jaguars and hares who ride on trains and inhabit care homes, bringing comfort, dignity, truth and tenderness. I have read some exceptional poetry books in 2017, but none more original, challenging and exceptionally moving than this one.
Stephanie Bowgett has been running the Albert Poets in Huddersfield for over 20 years. Her most recent collection is A Poor Kind of Memory (Calder Valley Press).
Kate Fox
Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches) is a great collection of poems but also a manifesto, compendium and multimedia experience.
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ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
by Widad Nabi
LEO BOIX introduces a bold novel by Mapuche writer Daniela Catrileo, a raw memoir from Cuban-Russian author Anna Lidia Vega Serova, and powerful poetry by Mexican Juana Adcock