Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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21st-century poetry
Writings of resistance from poets in exile
MEHRANGIZ RASSAPOUR: 'Hollow medals of heroism/Fame without ownership/Fetid mornings of whorehouses/Ridiculous faces of religion... Faithful torturers/Shredded protests/Mouldy jobs/Shining historical defeats...'
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
“OUR native soil never allows us to forget,” wrote the Roman poet Ovid when he was in exile by the Black Sea. For Salman Rushdie, exile is “an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back,” while Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once said that although he had two languages, “I forget which of them I dream in.”
If the 21st century is characterised by exile, emigration and violent displacement, what are the implications for poets who must leave their native languages behind? And what language do they dream in?
Jennifer Langer, the editor of Resistance: Voices of Exiled Writers (Palewell Press, £9.99) brings together in English the voices of 80 writers who have known imprisonment, war, persecution, emigration, refuge and exile in the first two decades of this century.
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PATRICK JONES recommends a vital anthology from Afghan and Iranian poets where the political and personal fuse into witness-bearing and manifesto-making
Travelogue/reportage by Argentinean Maria Sonia Cristoff, and poetry by Peruvian Gaston Fernandez and Puerto Rican Cristina Perez Diaz
LEO BOIX reviews Cuban poet Carlos Pintado; Mexican poet Diana Garza Islas; Mexican American writer and critic Rigoberto Gonzalez; and Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campos
MEIC BIRTWHISTLE speaks to David Constantine about the fascination he shares with Brecht for the material exactness of Greek poetry