James Roderick Burns has no doubts about the importance of Mayakovsky’s epic poem about Lenin in a new Smokestack edition by Rosy Carrick
politics
Merryn Williams is doubly impressed – both by Andy Croft’s finely crafted poetry and by its subject, the unfairly neglected writer and activist, Randall Swingler
A temporary installation in Bloomsbury Square is a powerful reminder of the work of exiled Russian poets in the last century
When Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939, the country he led was by no means united in its opposition to Hitler. The English aristocracy numbered many Nazi sympathisers in its ranks, who would have welcomed the introduction of a regime modelled on the Third Reich into their country during the 1930’s.
Following in Fitzgerald’s Footsteps: Brian Docherty reviews Ruth Valentine’s small but politically significant and beautifully illustrated new collection from Hercules Editions
Ruth Valentine considers the balance between politics and poetics in Alan Morrison’s new collection
Caroline Maldonado welcomes Cristina Viti’s recent translation of a 1968 poem-cycle by Elsa Morante
John Lucas finds multiple reasons to recommend this memoir by Gail Holst-Warhaft which is studded through with her own accomplished poetry and also gives a shrewdly observant account of post-war Greek history
Rafael Campo and Zeina Hashem Beck are two very different poets and Norbert Hirschhorn enjoys their work in different ways
Brian Docherty comments on political poems from pre-WW2 Japan by Kosuke Shirasu which have recently been republished in a bi-lingual edition by Jun Shirasu and Bruce Barnes
Thomas Ovans investigates a Shoestring anthology edited by Merryn Williams which has received an unusual amount of attention for a poetry book.
Fiona Sinclair commends Michael Rosen’s use of poetry to make some telling political points
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, politics, year 2018 • Tags: books, Fiona Sinclair, poetry, politics