DEREK TURNER is editor of The Brazen Head. He is also a novelist, reviewer, travelogist, and the author of the chorography Edge of England: Landfall in Lincolnshire (Hurst, 2022). www.derek-turner.com. Twitter: @derekturner1964. Instagram: edge.of.england “Stilled legendary depth:It was as deep as England” ‘Pike’, Ted Hughes The plumber’s van’s been standing since the small hours At…
Four poems by Clarence Caddell
CLARENCE CADDELL lives with his wife and three children in western Victoria, Australia, where he works as a high school English and humanities teacher, and writes in spare time he doesn't have. His first collection of poems, The True Gods Attend You, will be published by Bonfire books in 2022. Note. The first two poems…
The Salad Course, and The Hottest Ticket
P & J Poetics, LLC, published MIKE ALEXANDER’s first full-length collection, RETROgrade, in 2013. His most recent chapbook, We Internet in Different Voices (Modern Metrics), was released by EXOT books. His poems have appeared in Rattle, River Styx, Borderlands, Bateau, Abridged, Measure, Shit Creek Review, Raintown Review & other journals. The Salad Course Single-handed, Don Miguel clears the dinner table,…
On First Concert at the Bradley Symphony Center, Milwaukee
JACOB RIYEFF (@riyeff) is a translator, teacher, and poet. His work focuses on the Western contemplative tradition and the natural world. Jacob lives in the Upper Midwestern U.S. with his wife and three growing children.”A man’s attitude to life.” (Feb 20, 2022)O Edward Elgar, did you see our facesrapt in darkness, hearts attuned to your celloAs you lay upon your deathbed, tracesOf joy accompanying the low and mellowTones the strings invite our ears to hearAmid glissando runs to keep the mindAnd body clear? You cursed its weak premiereBut here a hundred years past you findA willing crowd to celebrate your movementsAs you lay in Worcester gasping for air‚From lyric to rondo, fulfillmentIn sonic pattern, virtuosic fare.Could you see, in your final agony,Our festival of superfluity?
Chapter Six. The Wedding
This is chapter Six of LIAM GUILAR’S almost completed epic of Britain. Chapter One was published in Long Poem Magazine #25 Spring 2021, and Chapters Two, Three, Four and Five in The Brazen Head. For more information about Hengist, Vortigern and the Legendary History, see www.liamguilar.com The story so far. Mid Fifth Century; Hengist and his brother Horsa have sailed to Britain where they have…
Inner pieces, inner peace
Credit: Shutterstock PETER KING says inconsistency is not incoherency We live in fragments. There is nothing that is so large to be all encompassing. There is nothing that is dominant, nothing that is the essence. Of course, we humans are common in our biology, psychology and our mortality, but this is not what defines us…
Castro, Kennedy and Khrushchev – the nuclear option
Image: Shutterstock Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis Serhii Plokhy, Allen Lane, 2021, 464 pages, £25 KEN BELL admires an unusually informed study of one of History’s nearest misses Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the first work to mine the KGB files that…
England’s musical Shakespeare
Henry Purcell STUART MILLSON gives a glimpse into the life of Henry Purcell Henry Purcell (1659-95) is forever associated with the birth of opera (or masques) in England – works such as King Arthur and The Fairy Queen - the creation of semi-operatic scenic cantatas, like his music for The Tempest, and with expansive works…
The evolutions of revolutionary architecture
A 1934 competition project, Narkomtiazhprom - from Soviet Design From Constructivism to Modernism,1920-1980 Anna Bokov, VKhUTEMAS and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920-1930 Park Books, 2021, 624pp, illus., $65 Katherine Zubovich, Moscow Monumental: Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin’s Capital Princeton University, 2021, 274pp + xii, illus., £34 Kristina Krasnyanskaya, Alexander Semenov (eds.), Soviet Design…
Medical notes from underground
"Theodore Dalrymple", anatomist of modernity (Image: Wikimedia Commons) MARK GULLICK profiles the cultural commentator THEODORE DALRYMPLE The English writer Theodore Dalrymple, whose real name is Dr. Anthony Daniels, spent much of his professional career as a hospital and prison psychiatrist. He has also written many books on a variety of subjects, and travelled the world…