Several factors contribute to the innocuousness of Ali Smith’s current project. She’s now published two novels of her projected ‘Seasonal Quartet’: Autumn, shortlisted...
The essay can seem to be the cosy heartland of belles-lettres, a place where nothing urgent is ever said. Recently, though, publishers have seemed willing to take on and even promote this...
à mon pote Jules merde en croûte, merde en daube, merde du pays, merde d’antan. merde de province, pâté de merde, folie de merde (merde boulangère). merde...
In a corner of the eastern Mediterranean, where the coast of Anatolia turns south towards Syria, a mountain massif rises by the sea. Its name in Ottoman times was Musa Dagh, the Moses...
o England, the time we thought your cows were cricketers the sun was blinking round like an uncle saying o o o very quietly to his feet the fizzed out grass beery river thick with weeds water...
For decades, Kurt Vonnegut was an unshakeable, if unconventional, part of the American literary canon: even if his books didn’t find a lot of traction in academia, they were in every...
The Flight Others look down on me. As well they might. I look down on myself from a great height: see the tramp’s straggly hair turned white – the off-white of effluent-polluted...
after Robert Aickman Your sisters flash like jewels, bright as needles. They’re threading languid reels in the ballroom. Your heart is young and taut; your heart is strung with sparkling...
The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognise Shigeo Shingo Thank you for giving me this opportunity in the world of work I will...
Although during his lifetime F.T. Prince (1912-2003) acquired a number of illustrious admirers – including those poetic polar opposites, Geoffrey Hill and John Ashbery – his poetry...
Marilyn Butler, whose Peacock Displayed was published in 1979, wasn’t the first to connect Peacock’s name with the showy wit of his satires. It started with Shelley, his friend...
‘Never lose your sense of the superficial’ was Lord Northcliffe’s advice for tabloid journalists. It’s something Donald Trump appears to understand for himself –...
Today on two legs stood and reached to the right spot as I saw it choosing among the twisting branches and multifaceted changing shades, and greens, and shades of greens, lobed, and lashing sun,...
Cixin Liu’s monumental Three-Body Trilogy is one of the most ambitious works of science fiction ever written. The story begins during the Cultural Revolution and ends 18,906,416 years into the future.
It was just a block or two off Palisade Ave, a sprawling, second-floor living room, faux wood-panelled, stuffed chairs, big sofa, cheap ceramic Disney figurines on the coffee table, but with a...
I hope you may have an electrical absence, as life never loses its startlingness, however assailed. Emily Dickinson, letter to J.K. Chickering, autumn 1882 1. Technologies – are not...
Big families are rare now in the West – even Catholic countries in Europe aren’t exactly prolific, though Ireland holds out against the trend – but even when they were...
When male poets have dramatic, bohemian or tragic lives, it is a triumph of consistency; when they have boring ones, it is a triumph of manly compartmentalisation. The rules are different for...