Talk Amongst Yourselves: The Great Anti-Debate
#thegreatarmstradedebate: 1914: the Western world is descending into the bloodiest war it has ever witnessed. Amid the waste of life, the waste of money and the wastelands of Europe, arms manufacturers thrived. What did people do to stop it? What means of protest did they have? And what are people doing now, 100 years later, to stop the arms trade? Join us with your ideas at a public, multimedia event. May 17, Brighton. Stalls, posters, artwork, leaflets, films, music, café… Chair: Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty Speakers and performers include: Davy Jones (Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Kemptown) Lindsey German (Stop the War Coalition) Hannah Hills (Campaign Against the Arms Trade) Naomi Foyle (Spoken word artist) Dr Idrees Ahmad (Pulsemedia.org) I was recently invited to read a poem at the above event, organised by The Green Party, Stop the War and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, in conjunction…
Departing Souls: Review of Houses of the Dead by Fawzia Kane
Houses of the Dead, a new poetry pamphlet by Fawzia Kane, is a beguiling tour through abandoned dwellings, at first still and empty, but increasingly stirred by the lingering traces of departing souls. May I tempt you with some titles? ‘House of the Vicar who Loved Too Much’, ‘House of the Penitent Bookseller’, ‘House of the Actor of Mystery Plays’ all give a flavour of the ghosts who haunt these powdery pages, though one of my favorite poems was simply called ‘House of the Sculptor’. I heard a echo of Louise Bourgeois in the sculptor’s sometimes brutal renovations of her ill-fitting tower, culminating in a solitary night vigil: When she was satisfied, she placed a red armchair on the roof. There, from the midnight of her saint’s day, she would sit alone, watching for dawn. An accomplished sequence of prose poems, verse, and carefully cropped black-and-white photography, the book is…