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
Latest editorial
Poetry that does not ignore people
Legendary poetry publisher Smokestack Books will cease operations by the end of the year. JOHN GREEN looks back at its achievements
Andy Croft and some of the collections
[Kev Howard]
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
POETRY is the most democratic form of literary expression — it only takes a pencil, a scrap of paper and/or a voice to create a poem of a few lines or stanzas. It won’t necessarily be good poetry but that is another issue.
Unfortunately, many people in Britain still today dismiss and ignore poetry. As socialist poet Adrian Mitchell memorably encapsulated it: “Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.”
Smokestack Books has spent two intensive decades trying to disprove this assertion. Its models were Curbstone Press based in the US and the French Le Temps des Cerises, publishers of “la poesie d’utilite publique” — poetry in the public interest.
Similar stories
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR