GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Latest editorial
Becky Cherriman - Austerity
Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter
DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
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
Austerity
Becky Cherriman
Hear it scutter
along the guttering of offices,
in the bins behind Waitrose,
the thorned bushes at the playground’s edge –
a language devised by the high-born
to parch the lips of those with less.
Live here too long
and it will shudder down your throat like flu.
You will wake one morning aching with it,
all other tongues you know forgotten –
the vernacular of the workers,
lexicons of children with little,
dialects of kindness,
the diction of being human.
Similar stories
by Mike Jenkins
by Rosie Jackson
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry