GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
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21st Century Poetry
Three great new collections about the unknowable past and the unknown future
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
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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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
The Labour Party proposal to scrap benefits for those unable to work will be debated in Parliament next Tuesday, and threatens the most vulnerable in our society. ALAN MORRISON presents some responses in poetry