MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
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)
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
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.
More from this author
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer
ANDY HEDGECOCK admires a critique of the penetration of our lives by digital media, but is disappointed that the underlying cause is avoided
ANDREW HEDGECOCK relishes visual storytelling with no respect for genres, movements or styles
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes two exhibitions that blur the boundaries between art and community engagement
