To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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21st Century Poetry
Three great new collections about the unknowable past and the unknown future
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
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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BOB NEWLAND appreciates an important contribution to the debate about how slavery helped to build the wealth of Western companies and states
JOSEPHINE BARBARO welcomes a diverse anthology of experiences by autistic women that amounts to a resounding chorus, demanding to be heard
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends that these beautifully written diaries from Gaza be essential reading for thick-skinned MPs