by Vince Laws
Human Immunodeficiency Virus, H.I.V.
Human first and foremost,
A maker of mistakes.
The mistake I made,
Was to fall in love.
Make sure it doesn’t happen to you.Continue Reading
HUMAN
human
REVIEW: THE GIRL IN THE DOG-TOOTH COAT, BY ZELDA CHAPPEL
A book filled with moths, whiskey and full moons; reading Zelda Chappel’s debut collection The Girl in the Dog-Tooth Coat, published with Bare Fiction (2015), forces you to be in the moment with each and every piece. With each turn of the page comes a fresh clarity and precision, yet still connected like water – at times a stream, and at others, a rushing waterfall. It explores grief, and through its dark and sombre tones, there is a glimmer of hope: that this is a tale of survival.
EMPIRE
(in support of Black Lives Matter)
a, pustule, fleshspun, pierced, when,
echoes, become, loud, and, silenced—loudly silenced—
when, burdens, are, called, gifts—processes, of, unintuition,
when, killing, becomes, justified, as, horror, of, the, natural,Continue Reading
NORMALISING CBT; MAKING VISIBLE MENTAL HEALTH
If your friend says ‘I’ve started going to the gym’ it is considered undisputedly positive; if they tell you ‘I’m getting CBT’, suddenly the atmosphere becomes tense. They seem to feel awkward as they tell you, and you don’t quite know how to react. They might as well have told you they’ve contracted an STD. But Cognitive Behavioural Therapy — ‘a talking therapy that can help you manage your problems by changing the way you think and behave’ — is only good for you. It is evidence of a sensible choice. And yet, sweating, starving and interfacing with an inanimate, rectangular scale every morning, is more attractive to people than sitting in a comfortable chair and talking leisurely with someone you trust.Continue Reading
HUMAN PROBLEMS, HUMAN SOLUTIONS – AN INTERVIEW WITH BABAR LUCK
by Chris Jarvis
In underground music circles, Babar Luck is something of a legend. For more than twenty years, he has been a staple feature of the UK punk scene, blending and smashing genres along the way. Starting as the bassist of seminal London band King Prawn, notorious for their eclectic influences which drew upon hardcore, reggae, metal, punk and hip-hop, Babar has gone on to have an illustrious solo folk career, as well as working on new bands such as East End Trinity and collaborative projects The Babylon Whackers and Suicide Bid, while providing guest vocals for friends and comrades in the scene such as Sonic Boom Six and Random Hand. Babar Luck’s musical outputs have been beyond any doubt, inhumanly prolific.Continue Reading
SPACE SPACE I CRAVE
by Alex Valente
Original Italian by Alda Merini (1931-2009), from ‘Vuoto d’amore’
Space space I crave, all the space
to sweetly move, wounded;
I crave space to sing to grow
fall and leap across the ditchContinue Reading
The Norwich Radical 