RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
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Letters from Latin America with Leo Boix: March 4, 2025
A pamphlet by British Latinx poet Patrick Romero McCafferty, poetry by Anglo-Argentinian Miguel Cullen, and a book of conjuring poems by Mexican Pedro Serrano
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
IN glass knot sun (Ignition Press, £7) British Latinx poet and editor Patrick Romero McCafferty unveils a personal narrative that transports readers from Mexico to Scotland and back. The book explores the materiality of the land, soil and human labour with striking beauty and profound insight.
The pamphlet, featuring 18 powerful poems, begins with Espiritu Santo With Snorkeller ’17, a visual poem that depicts a landscape in Mexico with mountains, the sun, a tranquil sea, and undercurrents represented by moving symbols “>==o> >==o>”. There is something mysterious and suggestive about this poem, which precedes A Doorway Between Explosions, written by the author about the San Juanico Disaster in Mexico City in 1984.
Here, Romero McCafferty underscores the human suffering resulting from a tragedy that claimed more than 500 lives and left around 7,000 people severely burned:
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