STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
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Radical poetry from Amir Darwish, David Cain, Ross Wilson, Reja-e Busailah and Andy Green
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
JAN WOOLF relishes an extensive history of our long relationship to trees in Britain that underlines the current emergency
DIANE WATT argues that while evidence of sex is not there, a 16th‑century lesbian poet could be Scotland’s answer to Gentleman Jack
AMIR DARWISH is a British-Syrian poet of Kurdish origin who came to this country as an asylum-seeker during the second Gulf war, hanging underneath a lorry on a cross-channel ferry.
In his second full-length collection Dear Refugee, Darwish seeks to rescue refugees from the media images of perpetrators or victims and he reflects on the suffering of the world’s 22 million refugees, what they have left behind, what they have lost and where they have arrived:
“Be thankful to the roads, Their stones as they lie before you/To the sky that generously shows you/The moon dangling its legs in your eyes,/Say thank you to nature, to the rivers who feed/The earth to feed you,/Be thankful to life and earth/When they knock open your heart.”
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