Latest editorial
WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Poetic polemics address ourselves and others
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
IRISH poet WB Yeats once observed that “out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”
It’s an unnecessary distinction that feeds into lazy ideas about public versus private, propaganda versus art. On the other hand, it is sometimes hard to find ways of writing that simultaneously address “others” and “ourselves.”
There are brilliant new examples of how to do it, one of them being Martin Thom’s Fair (Infernal Methods, £5), a satirical attack on the DSEI arms fair held in London every year. Its specific target is the selling of weapons to the Saudi government for use in Yemen. Part of the proceeds from the sale of the book is going to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.
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ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician
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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
