GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
Birdy
CHRIS SEARLE takes wing with Leeds-born poet of mixed Sri Lankan and English heritage, Seni Seneviratne
White-cheeked Starlings perching on power cables
[Laitche/CC]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
THE GO-AWAY BIRD: Poems by Seni Seneviratne
Peepal Tree Press, £9.99
MANY poets — and revolutionaries too, from Shelley to Rosenberg to the Palestinian laureate, Mahmoud Darwish — have invoked images of birds as freedom flyers and refugees from the human world on the ground of injustice and stranglehold. But few, like John Clare with his feathery wordplay and simple brilliance, have used their empathy to become the very birds they describe.
The Leeds-born poet of mixed Sri Lankan and English heritage, Seni Seneviratne, does exactly this in her collection The Go-Away Bird.
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