ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
Latest editorial
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]
Death comes for Liberals, entitled murder, Vatican hit squads, and fraternising with the Blitz killer
New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, and John Luther Adams
GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
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.
Similar stories
ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
CHRIS SEARLE pays tribute to the late South African percussionist, Louis Moholo-Moholo
MANJEET RIDON relishes a novel that explores the guilty repressions – and sexual awakenings – of a post-war Dutch bourgeois family
FIONA O'CONNOR recommends a biography that is a beautiful achievement and could stand as a manifesto for the power of subtlety in art