DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
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Sam Burns - Underwater Acoustics
Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter
STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
Underwater Acoustics
Sam Burns
Sound carries better beneath the waves.
We drifted to your side as you choked
on your neck fat; shattered your sleep
with a chorus of stories of drought
and war and hope, and little
brackish footprints on your sheets.
You heard. We thought you were deaf.
It’ll take us a lifetime to tell
you our names. But we’ll do it.
We’ll gurgle them into your waterlogged ears
whenever you swim, when it rains,
when you shower, like air bubbling out
of a poorly-patched lifeboat;
a calving iceberg; like whale song.
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The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
by Rosie Jackson
ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east