A progressive analysis of politics and the arts.
by Laura Potts
The most recent iteration of Volta, Salo Press’ regular Norwich poetry and prose night, drew a willing and eager crowd for the launch of ‘Sphinx’ by Cat Woodward. After a short open mic session, which saw a number of talented poets sharing their words to warm up the audience, Cat took to the front to read from her fascinating book.
by Alex Valente
Original Italian by Verusca Costenaro (1974 – ), ‘Il coraggio che fa primavera’
It’ll be from your comicseyes
that a new courage will rise
for the autumn, it’ll tangle in the wind
and the wind will paint it snowinter
so that the sun may thaw it
fresh in spring, it’ll be
a bearing of violets and mixture of calls,
cerulean choir bearing life in the background to desire,
the sprint of wings on the field, to feed on the grass that will grow,
summervoice adorned of an evergreen yellow,
a remedy to the fears brought by good
dreams of a small evening in august.
Featured image via caffellattefirenze
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by Alex Valente
Original Italian by Anna Belozorovitch (Moscow, 1983 – ), ‘Il porto’ from Il Debito
The harbour breathes as everything changes;
it carries in its womb the still change,
the evolution to turmoil-based unexpectedness,
the summer heat. And it makes no soundContinue Reading
by Eli Lambe
The Power is a profoundly affecting read. In it, Naomi Alderman envisions a switching of roles and of power dynamics, deftly parodying and reflecting back the ways in which we justify, enforce and understand gender roles.
It asks the question: “What if women were stronger than men; What if men had to be afraid of women?” and follows its core characters – Roxy, the daughter of a British crime boss; Tunde, a Nigerian journalist; Allie, an American foster kid who escapes an abusive household; and Margot, an American Mayor trying to balance her city in the wake of this sudden shift, and protect her daughters Jocelyn and Maddie – as the world progresses towards “Cataclysm.” Continue Reading
by Hannah Rose
Virginia Woolf stated in her 1929 seminal essay A Room of One’s Own that, because women remain unequal to men in society, they are less likely to succeed as writers. A writer has two basic requirements in order to write productively: an independent income which provides basic necessities—food and shelter— and uninterrupted writing time. In 1929, the majority of British women were either working to provide the basic necessities for others, and did not have a private space in which to pursue a creative life or an independent income. This, says Wolf, is why the literary canon is dominated by men. “Intellectual freedom,” she writes, “depends upon material things.”
Almost a century later, some women are still having to argue their right to a creative life.Continue Reading
by Alex Valente
Original Italian by Nadia Campana (1954-1985), untitled from Verso la Mente
more of the living during the journey
many horizons for hours and hours
submerged in distanceContinue Reading
CW: mentions harassment, domestic violence
When I first saw Tony Walsh, aka longfella, it was as a feature act at the Genesis Poetry Slam in Whitechapel. I remember being struck by a line about how growing breasts being something that labels some people ‘women’. This was a revelation to me, and yet something that I could identify with as a cis-gender woman reflecting on adolescence; it felt profound that a man could understand this experience in a way that made me feel understood in a way I hadn’t yet articulated myself.
When I later read what I assumed to be these same lines in Sex & Love & Rock&Roll, they didn’t strike me in quite the same way, as they offered something different. In ‘Start All the Clocks’, Walsh repeats ‘tell me how it feels’, as he asks of the readers
‘…tell me how it feels when you start to grow breasts
When Mother Nature writes ‘woman’ across a girl’s chest.’
It is in these lines that mean that Walsh is not solely a poet to hear on stage, but also one to read on the page, where you have the time to reflect and think.Continue Reading
by Eli Lambe
Hopkinson’s writing is enchanting. Her words wrap around you and inhabit you, they turn your skin to bark, the wind into a goddess, your body lifts and falls with the lines of beautifully crafted prose. To read her work is to be transformed, transported, transcended. Her first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), explored community, magic, and family in a Toronto “hollowed out” by white-flight and financial catastrophe.
Her second, Midnight Robber (2000), used language — particularly dialect — and mythology to imagine, from a Caribbean perspective, “what stories we’d tell ourselves about our technology – what our paradigms for it might be” and to bring together ideas of storytelling, colonialism and trauma. Since then, she has published several other novels and collections, all of which are thoughtful, accessible and fundamentally affecting, the most recent of which is the subject of this review. Continue Reading
by Cadi Cliff
CW: menstruation, abuse
I feel my body break open
and bleed for you
when we least expect it.
Continue Reading
by Alex Valente
Original Italian by Caterina Sinibaldi, after Alex Valente’s translation of Andrew McMillan’s ‘the men are weeping in the gym’, ‘le donne ridono in palestra’
the women are laughing in the gym
on smooth backs words run to the music,
thoughts and dreams on sweaty mats.
solitary machines with white towels sing the intimate exhaustion of a quietness
women.Continue Reading
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