poetry
Kate Tempest, BBC 6 Music Festival review - more personal than politicalTuesday, 10 March 2020
For those wondering if performance poet Kate Tempest would be upstaged or introduced by either pandemic panic or International Women’s Day – know that a) she’s fearless and b) she practices equality always. As such, there’s no pre-amble, other than... Read more... |
Imagining Ireland, Barbican review - raising women's voicesMonday, 24 February 2020
Recent politics surround the EU and nationhood, fantasies of Irish Sea bridges and trading borders more porous than limestone have revived the granular rub between Eire and Britain, and the Celtic Tiger cool of the Nineties is a history module these... Read more... |
Brighton Festival 2020 launches with Guest Director Lemn SissayTuesday, 11 February 2020
This morning the largest annual, curated multi-arts festival in England launched and announced its programme of events. With Guest Director, British and Ethiopian poet-playwright-broadcaster Lemn Sissay, MBE, at the helm, Brighton Festival 2020 is... Read more... |
Ilya Kaminsky: Deaf Republic - silence as 'a soul's noise'Sunday, 19 January 2020
"The deaf don’t believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing." This is one of two author’s "Notes" to Ilya Kaminsky’s latest collection, Deaf Republic, which was nominated for this year’s T. S. Eliot Prize. As an afterword, the note... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2019: Josienne Clarke – In All WeatherMonday, 23 December 2019
As one half of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winning duo with Ben Walker, Josienne Clarke released four superb albums, including 2014’s Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour and their finale, 2018’s Seedlings All. There’s an absolute clarity to her voice, as... Read more... |
Tynan, Clayton, Murray, Aurora Orchestra, Dean, Wigmore Hall review - Britten lives!Thursday, 05 December 2019
Benjamin Britten died on 4 December 1976. Last night’s Wigmore Hall concert, on the 43rd anniversary of his passing, proved that his real legacy lies not in inert acts of homage but a living engagement both with his work, and the unruly energies... Read more... |
Al Alvarez: 'If I drop dead this minute, I’ve had a terrific time'Monday, 23 September 2019
We like to think of ourselves as a nation of eccentrics, but some take their patriotic duties more seriously than others. Al Alvarez – poet, critic, poker player, rock climber, old-school literary mensch, who has died at the age of 90 – took his... Read more... |
Ocean Vuong: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous review – the new avant-gardeSunday, 23 June 2019
Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is written as a letter to his mother, who cannot read. She cannot read because, when she was five, her schoolhouse was burnt to the ground in an American napalm raid. “Our mother tongue, then,” writes Vuong, is the “mark of... Read more... |
CD: Kate Tempest - The Book of Traps and LessonsSunday, 09 June 2019
Here’s a strange thing: sit in a quiet room reading through the poems that make up Kate Tempest’s third album and her swirling collage of words drags you in. It’s an opaque concept work, mingling themes of a broken Britain, teetering on the brink of... Read more... |
Peter Perrett, Concorde 2, Brighton review - it’s a family affair for the former Only OneTuesday, 28 May 2019
It’s been a couple of years since Peter Perrett, the former frontman and creative force behind the much loved but commercially under-performing Only Ones decided that he’d had enough of being a mere legend and got back into the musical ring. He had... Read more... |
CD: Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith - The Peyote DanceSaturday, 25 May 2019
Soundwalk Collective is a multi-disciplinary audio-visual collective founded by Stephan Crasneanscki, a musical psycho-geographer and field recorder, the source material of his works drawn from specific locations: in the case of The Peyote Dance, it... Read more... |
Four Quartets, Barbican Theatre review - ultimate stage poetryFriday, 24 May 2019
The first surprise is that this hasn’t been done before. The poems that comprise TS Eliot’s Four Quartets are so embedded with references to dance that presenting them alongside choreography feels inevitable. Perhaps it took an anniversary – 75... Read more... |
