GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
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Lisa Kelly - Last Man to Leave the Ice Factory
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
Last Man to Leave the Ice Factory
Lisa Kelly
Ice was no chin-chin thing to keep a drink cold;
ice was business, titanic big, tonnes crushed
for the trawlers to keep fish fresh in the hold
tides away from land. Now machines are hushed;
then, up at four we were, 20 waggons waiting
for 20 tonnes of ice each. You’d eat off the floor
it was so polished. Pans of water chilled in a freezing
pool of brine, sliding out in slabs. No more;
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