MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Vasiliki Albedo - Athena
Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
Athena
Vasiliki Albedo
Slumped on your daybed still buzzing on yesterday,
barefoot goddess, armed with a shot
of ouzo, the remote by your side. But you’re four whole
mountains and a hundred-carat sea, you’ve six thousand
islands to your name: heiress, broke, selling it all,
stealing your way to the bank again, hungover
in your perfume of olive and grime. You’re a fig sign
shaking the sky, you’re an open-armed shrug,
welcoming as you reach for the valium.
So many guests at your feet, on your islands like freckles, darkening.
What will it be Athena? Another election, a little concealer?
You are hooked on Twitter and telemarketing and the news
of last Friday’s fratricide. Listen: the pitter-patter
of another fracas. Behold, it will be televised.
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ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
TONY FOX invites readers to come and hear the story of the remarkable Liverpudlian International Brigader Alexander Foote
by Widad Nabi