In search of an Italian identity
Carla Scarano visits two exhibitions in Florence: The return to Italy of Salvatore Ferragamo in 1927 and the Dawn of a Nation after WW II
politics
Interesting? I’ll Say!
John Lucas reviews a genuinely interesting collection of essays by Jim Burns – and adds some equally interesting observations of his own
Celebration of the East London Federation of Suffragettes
The East End of London was a crucible for radical ideas and activism, including the women’s suffrage movement, fired in part by the deprivation and inequality experienced by so many of its inhabitants.
Poems for Grenfell Tower
Rip Bulkeley describes the planning and production of a forthcoming anthology of poems responding to the fire in Grenfell Tower .
A Blade of Grass
Richie McCaffery examines a new anthology of Palestinian poetry, edited by Naomi Foyle, and finds it eye-opening
London Grip Poetry Review – Rosen
Fiona Sinclair commends Michael Rosen’s use of poetry to make some telling political points
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin – a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky
James Roderick Burns has no doubts about the importance of Mayakovsky’s epic poem about Lenin in a new Smokestack edition by Rosy Carrick
London Grip Poetry Review – Croft
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
101st km, Further, Everywhere
A temporary installation in Bloomsbury Square is a powerful reminder of the work of exiled Russian poets in the last century
The Creation of the Myth of Dunkirk, by Jane McChrystal.
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.
London Grip Poetry Review -Valentine
Following in Fitzgerald’s Footsteps: Brian Docherty reviews Ruth Valentine’s small but politically significant and beautifully illustrated new collection from Hercules Editions
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A Third Colour
Merryn Williams shares a few thoughts about Alan Dunnett’s rather challenging poetry collection which seeks, among other things, to capture “the psychological fallout of anxiety in modern capitalist culture”