MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Late equaliser
ALISTAIR FINDLAY welcomes a fine collection of football poems that celebrate a generational shift in both the sport and the culture
POETRY IN MOTION: The Scotland players thank the fans after the UEFA Women's Euro 2025 qualifying match against Serbia won 1:0 and played at Firhill Stadium in Glasgow on July 16 2024
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
We Are Scottish Football
Julie McNeill, Luath, £7.99
THE publication of Julie McNeill’s new collection was perfectly timed to coincide with the Euros and future Women’s World Cup qualifiers. Its poetic focus may be on Scotland but its reach is global because football is global, as it has been since at least the 1950s as a male domain.
In capitalist terms women’s football is being sponsored because it has brought to the market a new audience of young girls and women with a growing fan base — mums, aunts, grannies, sisters, dads, uncles, boy and girl friends. It has already created a new infrastructure of players, coaches, trainers, physios, managers, scouts, pitches, referees and football strips being sold with the names of female football stars.
More from this author
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
ALISTAIR FINDLAY welcomes a collection of essays from one of the cultural left’s most respected speakers and activists
ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends the first representative selection in English of the poetry of the Soviet war correspondent Ilya Ehrenburg
ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends a brilliant collection of poems written to accompany stunning images of the Miners’ strike
