I grew up in Walthamstow, London listening to my Dad play finger-picking folk covers on the guitar and banjo and to my Mum’s very small record collection which we would play on repeat and dance around to in the lounge. I especially remember The Seven Drunken Nights by the Dubliners which me and my sister … Read more
The theme of ‘late art’ was recently explored by the art historian Carel Blotkamp in The End: Artists’ Late and Last Works (2019) focusing on the visual arts, but in an age nonspecific way. Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration’ is central to the argument of the book. After Raphael’s death, the author notes his body was laid out … Read more
No Record of Wrongs Love does keep a record of some things— your solitary walks in Coln Saint Aldwyn’s, a precise curl of Virginia Creeper tendrils, vermillion in autumn, the way you carefully smelled horses’ necks beneath the mane back home, velveteen crushes of cornhusks lashed to lampposts Love notes you’ve yet to find a … Read more
The Empire Windrush sails tonight, she’s got a one-way ticket, and she’s half way home In June 1948, The Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury docks in England to the sound of a brass band and hundreds of cheering residents. On board were 802 people, the majority of whom were returning from the Caribbean. Returning, because … Read more
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity, but I know none, therefore am no beast. William Shakespeare, Richard III I anticipated the takeover of the vast majority of the publishing industry by fourth or fifth-wave feminism. It has been in the mix for five years or so, and it dominates this arena; … Read more
What do you pay attention to when you listen to music? The lyrics and melody? The instrumentation and timbre? I hear the bass and rhythm. It’s challenging for me to remember lyrics. A beautiful bass enchants me, and the queen of the bass, of course, is the double bass. Still, it took me more than … Read more
The anthropologist Jack Goody pours scorn on modern dining habits. Solitary consumption he says reverses the customary habit of ‘public input and private output’, making eating alone ‘the equivalent of shitting publicly.’ Dining, after all, as the great gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, put it: ‘is the common bond which unites the nations of the world in … Read more
Bliain an Áir ‘The Year of Slaughter’, 1740-41 Around the earth, a warring, wooden sea of brigs was bristling, a-flame; volcanic ash descending on the vacillating map. The weathered world began to shift – a tiny alteration sowing ice across the land. The shining-bellied geese no longer wintered by the lough. The turf-blue river waters … Read more
The underlying theme of Canary is that of missed warnings and overcoming trauma. My mother lost her battle with cancer in 2016 and my son Noah was born asleep in 2020. I’ve always been interested in the experience of extreme states of mind and body and even though these experiences were so painful, they were … Read more
I spent four years teaching English in Changchun, a city of six million people in Jilin Province in the far north-east of China, about nine hundred kilometres south of China’s border with southern Siberia. Changchun literally means ‘long spring’, a misnomer. The months from November to April are a long cold winter, when daytime temperatures … Read more