Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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The disillusion of an upper-class Caliban
GORDON PARSONS negotiates an exhaustive biography of WH Auden that explores his growing detachment from England
THE TINTIN OF HIS ERA? WH Auden (R) and novelist Christopher Isherwood pictured at Victoria Station, 1938, en route to China. Attempting to combine reportage and art, they spent six months in 1938 visiting China amid the Sino-Japanese War, working on their book Journey to a War (1939), and subsequently emigrated to the US
[National Media Museum from UK/CC]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
The Island: WH Auden and the Last of Englishness
Nicholas Jenkins, Faber, £25
THE NEW YORK TIMES obituary of Wystan Hugh Auden in 1976 noted that “he was often called the greatest living poet of the English language.”
In one of his essays he claimed that “the only method of attacking or defending a poet is to quote him. Other kinds of criticism, whether strictly literary, or psychological or social, serve only to sharpen our appreciation or abhorrence by making us intellectually conscious of what was previously but vaguely felt.”
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JENNY FARRELL pays tribute to the late Michael Longley, whose poetry, forged in the time of The Troubles, speaks to today’s wars
ALISTAIR FINDLAY welcomes a collection of essays from one of the cultural left’s most respected speakers and activists
RUTH AYLETT reviews two books of poetry, one by the Iranian American Marjorie Lofti, the other by the British Lebanese Omar Sabbagh
FIONA O’CONNOR recommends a biography of a Portuguese modernist poet who maintained a philosophical approach to his own being and is best encountered within the playfulness of his writing