Being an artist, writer, musician, teacher, journalist, or other professions involves a lifetime of learning and a never-ending-journey. Perhaps no one understands this better than Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq, who graduated from the College of Fine Arts in Khartoum in 1963 and was a founding member of the Khartoum School, a modern art movement established in … Continue reading
We Lived Happily during the War And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house— I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth … Continue reading
Art is never just art in this ripped up mess of a world. Today’s Aboriginal art is often an expression of cultural sovereignty and survival, in a country which oppresses Aboriginal people, but uses Aboriginal heritage and art as a commodity – as a highly profitable souvenir. This post aims to celebrate various Aboriginal artists … Continue reading
The following three poems are hard and liberating. Read them out loud and with one fist clenched. Laura Passin is a writer and scholar specialising in contemporary US poetry and gender studies. I am not old – by Samantha Reynolds I am not old, she said I am rare I am the standing ovation at … Continue reading
I read Mai’a Williams’ book like some one starved for word gems and insights. I want to cover this book for this blog because no one talks about mothers like they are the key protagonists in this world. They (and women and people of colour and people in poor countries and..) are portrayed as being … Continue reading
Farrah Akbik is a British-Syrian poet based in London who writes to raise awareness of the hardships Syria and Syrian refugees are going through. Al Sham (*another name for Damascus) I want to lay my head in the lap of Ghouta, Dull my senses with pomegranate wine. Drift like Ophelia down the river Barada, Lose … Continue reading
A Dead Sun – by Bejan Matur I peel night from the dead sun’s flesh and like a scarf wrap it round my head The graves of children – by Bejan Matur So – we died. We flitted out of darkness. Beaches bore witness, as did the tiniest of stones. Night and stars streamed above us where … Continue reading
“Tonight I can write the saddest lines … ” Pablo Nerudo says in the first of these videos which respectfully and beautifully bring his poems to life. Poema 20 Walking around Leaning into the afternoons Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes. There in the highest blaze my solitude … Continue reading
Many of the wonderful ways that people have captured this most stifling of things: “We’ve forgotten much. How to struggle, how to rise to dizzy heights and sink to unparalleled depths. We no longer aspire to anything. Even the finer shades of despair are lost to us. We’ve ceased to be runners. We plod from … Continue reading
I love Nye’s poetry because of the rich way it brings a new perspective to everyday things and the little things in life, while not shying away from the world’s big horrors. Her first poem here is a great example of questioning the smallest things (and making them beautiful through that new way of seeing), … Continue reading
I love how raw, strong, and to-the-point activist poetry usually is. There’s no time to beat about the bush, no space to weave pleasantries into the systemic abuse. Aja Monet’s poetry is like that. Her book, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter was published last year. Below, a few snippets from it, followed by her … Continue reading
“Estados Unidos: el país donde la libertad es una estatua.” (“United States: the country where liberty is a statue”) –Nicanor Parra Nicanor Parra, often described as an “anti-poet”, died on Tuesday aged 103. Parra was a Chilean artist and poet who rejected the formalisms of poetry and abstract, inaccessible, wankiness. He was direct, blunt, unafraid, … Continue reading
