GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
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Adam Kammerling - Red Phone Boxes
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
Red Phone Boxes
Adam Kammerling
Between Haywards Heath and Gatwick,
there's a trackside clearing deep in scrub
where thirty red phone boxes stand in an arc.
Their positioning, deliberate and deep in woods,
makes a Pagan ritual: red hoods, torches, prayers
to bygone England, a sacrifice of rabbit.
On Lewes Road in Brighton, a red phone box has been
nudged to death by a long, slow storm. 19 of 26 windows
smashed, chunks chewed out its frame, old conquest’s names
graff-tattooed on face and back. DIO, COST, MSG, ERKS.
Anti-fash stickers melt on its skin. At the box's top,
four waspish crowns glare out like weary compass points.
They don't know how their house got into such a state.
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