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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Letters from Latin America with Leo Boix: March 4, 2025
A pamphlet by British Latinx poet Patrick Romero McCafferty, poetry by Anglo-Argentinian Miguel Cullen, and a book of conjuring poems by Mexican Pedro Serrano
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
IN glass knot sun (Ignition Press, £7) British Latinx poet and editor Patrick Romero McCafferty unveils a personal narrative that transports readers from Mexico to Scotland and back. The book explores the materiality of the land, soil and human labour with striking beauty and profound insight.
The pamphlet, featuring 18 powerful poems, begins with Espiritu Santo With Snorkeller ’17, a visual poem that depicts a landscape in Mexico with mountains, the sun, a tranquil sea, and undercurrents represented by moving symbols “>==o> >==o>”. There is something mysterious and suggestive about this poem, which precedes A Doorway Between Explosions, written by the author about the San Juanico Disaster in Mexico City in 1984.
Here, Romero McCafferty underscores the human suffering resulting from a tragedy that claimed more than 500 lives and left around 7,000 people severely burned:
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ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
KEVIN DONNELLY accepts the invitation to think speculatively in contemplation of representations of people of African descent in our cultural heritage
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin