A progressive analysis of politics and the arts.
by Alex Valente.
Original Italian by Paula Schöpf/Bloom (Sinti poet, 1953 – )
As a painter hungry for beauty
I walk every street
And at sunset
I stop at the corners of the world
And paint your life
Sister
Friend
Whore
Your gaze lost in space
In your eyes both daybreak and dusk
Swaying you reveal the exhaustion in your feet
Swaying you reveal a breast curved with sadness
Affected moves of a travelled womanContinue Reading
by Alex Valente.
Original Italian by Paula Schöpf/Bloom (Sinti poet, 1953 – )
The Sinti story has ended
The violins go quiet
The guitars have lost their voiceContinue Reading
by Alex Valente.
Original Italian by Gaspara Stampa (1523 – 1554)
Love has made me so I live in fire,
a salamander, queen of her domain,
or that creature of similar vein
who born in flames, then in flames retire.Continue Reading
by Alex Valente.
Original Italian by Sibilla Aleramo, ‘Donna nel domani del mondo’.
I am pregnant with you,
woman who’ll live in the world’s tomorrow.
In a distant year
my flesh created,
my fibres remember,
each day a darkened labour
bodily suffering tamed by will
and sweetened ineffably
by hope.Continue Reading
(St. Peter and St. Paul from the South-East; Anthony Moore)
Why would an atheist radical historian go to church? My answer would be that history is an attempt to find out who we are. Churches are, invariably, the oldest surviving buildings in European cities, towns and villages and by closely reading them we can discover how class, status and power shaped the lives of the people through, sometimes, over a thousand years of time. The ‘we’ is everyone coming to the Radical site; whether Norfolk is home or a new place and from whatever ‘faith’ or ‘non-faith’ background you come from.
This is the story of a journey to one remarkable Norfolk church; a journey passing through the suburban necropolis of Toftwood to what Tourism Norfolk would, no doubt, call the ‘market town’ of Swaffham, although many years have passed since the market destroyed the ‘market’.
by Cadi Cliff.
‘I’m a Woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
That’s me.’
Phenomenal Woman (1978)
On May 28th the voice of the six-foot-tall 86 year old, Maya Angelou, hailed as a Renaissance woman and one of the great voices of contemporary literature, fell silent. With a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood’s first female black director, she’s most famous as a writer, essayist, playwright, poet and civil-rights activist – she was, and will continue to be, formidable. Continue Reading
by Cadi Cliff.
The reality of UKIP topping the polls in the UK European election with 4,352,051 votes still stings and outrages. Over at Westminster a nationalist Union Flag appears to be flying from our education department as the Tory education secretary Michael Gove proposes a GCSE English Literature syllabus out of the 1940s. We’ve somehow just painted ourselves as purple, nationalistic, and self-important. What happened to looking outward?Continue Reading
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