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Mariangela
Ian SeedThree texts
Rupert M LoydellVessel
Melita SchaumSome Guts
Simon Collings (with collages by John Goodby)Three Short Fictions
Meg PokrassThe Campus Novel
Peter RobinsonCharlie Boy and Captain Fitz: A One-Act Play
Alan WallSnapshot, Sachsenhausen and three more poems
Peter BlairSeven short poems
Lucian Staiano-DanielsFour prose poems
Olivia TuckThe Back of Beyond and two more prose poems
Tony KittTwo poems
Moriana Delgadofrom Reverse | Inverse
Lucy HamiltonSix haibun
Sheila E. MurphyKingfishers and cobblestones and five more new poems
Kitty HawkinsZion Offramp 76–78
Mark ScrogginsCome dancing with me and two more new poems
Marc VincenzPlease Swipe Right
Chloe Phillips‘Three Postcards’ and a prose poem
Linda BlackStill Life
Melita SchaumIn memory of
John Taylor with drawings by Sam ForderImmortal Wreckage
Will StoneNew in Translation
Snowdrifts
Marina Tsvetaeva, trans. by Belinda CookePoems from Prière (1924)
Pierre Jean Jouve, trans. by Will StoneSix Prose Poems
Pietro di Marchi, trans. by Peter Robinson -
A new Review of John Matthias’s Some Words on Those Wars by Garin Cycholl.
Anthony Howell’s review, A Clutch of Ingenious Authors: Michelene Wandor Four Times EightyOne: Bespoke Stories | Annabel Dover Florilegia | Sharon Kivland Abécédaire
Essays by Alan Wall
· ‘King of Infinite Space’: The Virtue of Uncertainty
· AI: Signs of the Times
· The Lad from Stratford
· Stanley Kubrick: Sex in the CinemaWill Stone’s Missing in Mechelen and At Risk of Interment
G. Kim Blank’s Civilizing, Selling, and T. S. Eliot Curled Up behind the Encyclopædia Britannica
Tronn Overend’s Samuel Alexander on Beauty
AND Conor Robin Madigan’s Master Singer, Simon Collings’s Robert Desnos, Screenwriter, and Igor Webb’s Never Again
New Fortnightly Serials
from The Ruinad
Anthony Howellfrom White Ivory
Alan Walland much more below this column.
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Audio archive: Two poems, with an audio track, from Heart Monologues by Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani | Daragh Breen’s Aural Triptych | Hayden Carruth reads Contra Mortem and Journey to a Known Place | Anthony Howell reads three new poems | James Laughlin reads Easter in Pittsburgh and five more | Peter Robinson reads Manifestos for a lost cause, Dreamt Affections, Blind Summits and Oblique Lights
Previous Serials
2011: Golden-beak in eight parts. By George Basset (H. R. Haxton).
2012: The Invention of the Modern World in 18 parts. By Alan Macfarlane.
2013: Helen in three long parts. By Oswald Valentine Sickert.
2016: The Survival Manual by Alan Macfarlane. In eight parts.
2018: After the Snowbird, Comes the Whale, by Tom Lowenstein.
LONDON
Readings in The Room: 33 Holcombe Road, Tottenham Hale, London N17 9AS – £5 entry plus donation for refreshments. All enquiries: 0208 801 8577
Poetry London: Current listings here.
Shearsman readings: 7:30pm at Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1. Further details here.NEW YORK
10 reliable poetry venues in NYC.
· The funeral of Isaac Albéniz
· Coleridge, poetry and the ‘rage for disorder’
· Otto Rank
· Patrons and toadying · Rejection before slips
· Cut with a dull blade
· Into the woods, everybody.
· Thought Leaders and Ted Talks
· How Mary Oliver ‘found love in a breathing machine.’
AND read here:
· James Thomson [B.V.]
A dilemma for educators:
Philosophy and the public impact.
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Michelene Wandor on Derek Walcott and the T.S. Eliot Prize.
.Nick Lowe: the true-blue Basher shows up for a friend.
Anthony Howell: The new libertine in exile.
Kate Hoyland: Inventing Asia, with Joseph Conrad and a Bible for tourists.
Who is Bruce Springsteen? by Peter Knobler.
Martin Sorrell on John Ashbery’s illumination of Arthur Rimbaud.
The beauty of Quantitative Easing.
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The Wedding: Good, old-fashioned Royal Family (production) values.
By Michelene Wandor.
‘THE WEDDING’. FOR SOME time to come, those words will mean only one thing: Prince William and Kate Middleton, April 29, 2011. Along with (apparently) two billion people round the world, I watched from dawn until dusk and beyond. The lead-up brought ideological and retail opportunity. All the websites offering me deals and bargains had woven the royal wedding into their spiels. Every newspaper was covered with pre- and post- pictures. Speculation was rife about ‘the dress’, virtually the only remaining mystery about the oh-so-public event of the twenty-first century, although there were enough unofficial leaks for pre-wedding commentators to lay educated bets on Sarah Burton, for Alexander McQueen. And so it proved to be. Photographs of Grace Kelly in the 1950s were dusted off, to reinforce one of the Cinderella mantras: a prince marrying a commoner. More accurately, in this case, it was a wealthy middle-class graduate. The critical point is that Catherine doesn’t come from hereditary aristocracy, but from upwardly mobile, self-made paternal success.
BUT ENOUGH OF MANTRAS. I won’t rehearse those of which we have probably had enough. The Cinderella story. Just an ordinary couple. A love match. We Brits do pomp and ceremony better than anyone else. Spot the difference between this and Charles and Di in 1981. A quasi-rehearsal for the Olympics in 2012. A new era for the British monarchy. Very occasionally there was a whisper about the succession – will it skip a generation, and if so, when?
My attention was, like everyone else’s, largely on the spectacle, on the superb production values, and then, as the day went on, my focus was directed to the televisual foreground. I had decided to go with ITV, rather than the BBC, because, on the whole I prefer their newsreaders and presenters.
Alastair Stewart and Mary Nightingale, outside the palace and Abbey, took the sycophantic ceremonial line. Fair enough. But in the specially constructed studios, we had more relaxed commentators. Philip Schofield and Julie Etchingham made a decent double act. Schofield, as one of the hosts of ‘Dancing on Ice’ is exemplary. He is relaxed, reliable, cheeky and irreverent at times. But he carries gravitas in his fresh face and grey hair. Andrew Neil, drafted in to give some sceptical comments on royal family’s need to be rebranded, provided a bit of welcome ideological muscle. In the end, of course, they all capitulated, but it was a far cry from the olden days of wall-to-wall elder-Dimbleby reverence.
I NOTED ALSO, WITH interest, how many of our regular TV commentators are so evidently part of our comfortable aristo classes. You could tell, because they had official invitations: Tom Bratby and Ben Fogle, to name but two. I took pleasure in the absence of Blair and Brown, I noted the way Elton John didn’t put much gusto into his hymn singing, and sympathised with reporter Mark Austin’s grumpiness, because he seemed to have drawn the short straw of the day. Unceremoniously kicked off the Mall, as I think he put it, he ended up uncomfortably surrounded by rowdy royalists.
Finally, it is salutary to note the similarities and differences between this and the standard Italian Renaissance marriages. These were always arranged as political alliances, with the bride, plus dowry, imported to the husband’s city state. Virginity (on the woman’s side) was necessary, and night-time consummation witnessed by friends and family. The birth of a male heir was essential, otherwise the faulty wife risked annulment, dismissal to a convent, or (as in the case of our own dear Henry V111) execution.
On Friday, April 29, 2011, our couple are friends. They have lived together – as one royal biographer said, without mentioning the word ‘sex’: ‘This is a woman who knows exactly what to do.’ And yet, a guest agony aunt on TV, asked for her advice to the bride said: ‘Have a son quickly, and don’t take any lovers.’ Plus ca change?
Michelene Wandor’s two most recent poetry books are published by Arc Publications: Musica Transalpina (a Poetry Book Society Recommendation), and The Music of the Prophets. She writes about the arts for The Fortnightly Review.
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Publication: Sunday, 1 May 2011, at 00:32.
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