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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The Big Calls, and To 2040
RUTH AYLETT recommends two new collections, one that repurposes the past and the other that writes from the 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
The Big Calls by Glyn Maxwell (Live Canon) £12
To 2040 by Jorie Graham (Carcanet Poetry) £15.99
HOW can a poet engage with the world, with struggles for justice and equality, with the oncoming train of climate change? In the two poetry collections reviewed here we see two different approaches.
Glyn Maxwell is not only a prize-winning poet but a dramatist for both stage and radio, an opera librettist, novelist and the author of one of the best-known guides to poetry, On Poetry (Oberon Books, 2012).
His latest collection, The Big Calls, is based on the ingenious idea of taking a dozen classic English Victorian poems, staples of the official “canon,” and repurposing them. He does this by reusing their rhymes and metres while wrenching them from their empire-era preoccupations to address the issues of our day.
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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
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry
by Christopher Norris