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You’ll never walk alone – David Morley’s The Crowd
Anfield – from the away section (Photo credit: Not forgotten) At midday, those expecting Ian Payne’s Sunday Review show on Radio 5 Live were thrown into David Morley’s The Crowd, Morley’s tribute to...
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Liberating constraints – Tom Chivers’ Adventures in Form
Book Browsers on Cuesta de Moyano I (Photo credit: shehani) Reporting back from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, George Szirtes quotes Jackie Kay: “Why do novelists so fear the death of the...
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Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s Sophie Mayer’s Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot
silly-balaclava (Photo credit: saxarocks) Post Live Aid, I’ve always viewed the charity concert or album with cynicism. Sure, the cause is worthy but you wonder whether the preening stars are there for...
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Howl, howl, howl! Paul Durcan’s Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have my...
Old Women (Photo credit: OlsenWeb) You lash out at the strange and frightening; you lack the ability to control your bowels; you’re helpless and depend upon your loved ones to feed and dress you....
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In vino veritas – Matthew Stewart’s Tasting Notes
Only someone who follows no football can understand the feelings of confusion and fear that accompany the convergence of their personal diary and a major fixture. I’d just moved to teach English in a...
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Take up your cross and follow me – Andrew Motion’s The Customs House
The Resurrection of the Soldiers, Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere (Photocredit – The Church on the Corner) If you’re ever on the A34 near Basingstoke, then consider stopping at Burghclere. The main...
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This must be underwater love – Richard Meier’s Misadventure
Underwater (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Cleaning the roof of my narrowboat one morning, I slipped and cartwheeled into the Thames. Despite my love of rivers, I can barely swim and, clawing between the...
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I am a Camera – Paul Farley’s The Dark Film
Starlings over the West Pier, Brighton (Photo credit: howzey) I was content to sit on the pebbles, lit by the heatless fluorescence of the winter sun and enjoying the gothic charm of a guano-stuccoed...
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Ruined in a day – Jacob Polley’s The Havocs
Volubilis, a partly excavated Roman city in Morocco (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Alan Bennett‘s new play, People, closes with the line ‘Let lost be lost. Let gone be gone, and not fetched back.’ It’s easy...
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Living in a box – Sean Borodale’s Bee Journal
Seismograph Pinatubo (Photo credit: Wikipedia) It began as an idle thrumbing, blending with the shiver of the branches. The path ahead looked the same as the path behind: horticultural order and beauty...
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Poetry by Heart
Sir Andrew Motion (Photo credit: Mr Ush) Poetry by Heart is a recitation competition which launches in British schools this month. The competition, funded in part by the Department for Education and...
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The last day of our acquaintance – Sharon Olds’ Stag’s Leap
Titian – Venus and Adonis (detail) – (Photo credit: Wikipedia) In his Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare’s goddess attempts to seduce the youth saying, ”since I have hemm’d thee here / ‘Within the circuit...
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The whole of the moon – Where Rockets Burn Through, edited by Russell Jones
William Blake’s Ancient of Days (Photo credit: Wikipedia) In the days when video games were packaged in cassette boxes, their lurid covers promised adolescents the sort of ultra-violence that, in...
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Generation Sex – John Hartley Williams’ Pistol Sonnets
St Peter’s Basilica (Photo credit: Sarah Price Photography) Training to be a priest in Rome, St Peter’s Basilica inspired awe and reverence. It wasn’t just because the dome soars to the heavens, shot...
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Town Called Malice – Formerly by Tamar Yoseloff and Vici MacDonald
Part of Ralph Agas’s map of Oxford, 1578 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) In the days before mobility scooters, it was the ornaments and the net curtains, running in ribbons along the terraces of St Thomas’...
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Man in the Mirror – Ben Parker’s The Escape Artists
George Shaw, Ash Wednesday: 8.30 am, Humbrol enamel on board It’s difficult to pin down what exactly it is about a George Shaw that’s so disconcerting. At one level, there’s less going on than there...
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Full fathom five – Richie McCaffery’s Spinning Plates
The ACME Thunderer (Photo credit: ge’shmally) On clearing my great aunt’s house, my parents presented me with her ACME Thunderer. She was a teacher from the old school, and I can imagine her, the...
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The Drowners – Kim Moore’s If We Could Speak Like Wolves
Night view (Photo credit: powazny) I eventually looked through the bedroom window, towards the source of the noise, and a ghost, street lit in Thames water, stared back. The thrashing in the river...
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Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? Shazea Quraishi’s The Courtesans Reply
Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Edouard Manet, Olympia (Photo credit: wallyg) When I admit to reading almost nothing in translation, people are unimpressed, and I admit it: they have a good point. It’s just that...
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Danse Macabre – Katha Pollitt’s The Mind-Body Problem
As we stood filling the ashtray, a whey-faced seminarian dispensed advice about the forthcoming term at Rome’s Gregorian University. I forget the lecturer’s name, but he’d made quite an impression on...
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