MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Class reproduction
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
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
Swell
Maria Ferguson, Penguin, £10.99
ALL poetry must come in some way from the personal experience of the person who writes it, but using your own life directly as raw material is very much the way many poets write currently. In Swell, Maria Ferguson presents a chunk of her life, from lovers and singledom through a miscarriage, to a successful pregnancy and a child.
Feminists argue that “the personal is political” — that patriarchy and gender-oppression are illuminated through the specific details of a woman’s life; and that a woman’s body is as fit a topic for poetry as nature or romantic love. These are also topics that allow women readers to feel their own experience is seen and valued. How far does Swell meet these objectives?
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by Maria Ferguson
RUTH AYLETT recommends two anthologies: one that bears witness to refugee and immigrant experiences, and the other to our political relationship to water
With most of recorded history dominated by the voices of men, LYNNE WALSH encourages sisters to read the memoirs of women – and to write their own too
RUTH AYLETT reviews two books of poetry, one by the Iranian American Marjorie Lofti, the other by the British Lebanese Omar Sabbagh