Rebooting the saints: Fran Lock
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
JONATHAN TAYLOR is fascinated by the philosophical problems that permeate the art of life-writing
GORDON PARSONS steps warily in between the lines of Britain’s most famous diarist
SIMON DUFF recommends a recording of Arvo Part that takes the listener on a pilgrimage through seemingly distant times and events of the Bible
FOR anyone unexcited by the news that the Forward prize for the best first collection has just been given to a book of poems about playing Super Mario, four important new books of poetry about things that matter might stir the spirits.
As Rob Walton puts it in the collection Release a Rage of Red (Culture Matters, £5): “Write poems on the tins you put in the foodbank/Write verse about how foodbank even became a word/Write about alternatives to foodbanks… Write about writing a Closed sign on the last foodbank.”
The collection is the third anthology of entries to the annual Unite-sponsored Bread and Roses award. Edited by Mike Quille, the book is a furious reply to the insular and trivial narcissism of so much of the contemporary British poetry scene.
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician
A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis
