WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Neither here nor there
Two accomplished collections from Grace Nichols and Louisa Adjoa Parker explore what it means to live between two worlds
VIVIDLY DESCRIPTIVE: Louisa Adjoa Parker
[Maisie Hill] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
GRACE NICHOLS’ beautiful new collection Passport to Here and There (Bloodaxe, £9.95) is a kind of autobiography in verse.
The first part is about growing up in Guyana, where Nichols meets the ghost of her childhood, “running/with slipping shoulder-straps/and half-plaited hair/beside a brown expanse/of memorising water/and the mellow faces of wooden houses/half-hidden by a weave/of coconut, mango, guenip trees.”
There are some perfect poems here about adolescence, notably Confirmation, Spirit Rising and Sweet Fifteen: “If the leaves of my memory serve me — /That was the year my hair went beehive/the year of the kiss, touching smugly/in the mirror my bee-stung lips.”
More from this author
ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician
New titles from Fran Lock, Richard Skinner, Tara Bergin and Mark A Murphy
New titles from Kurdish poet İlhan Sami Comak and Volker Braun, one of Germany’s most important writers
New collections from Neil Fulwood, Kevin Higgins, Clare Saponia, Nora Blascsok and Peter Godfrey
