#thebookonmytable Provocative. Chilling. So smart. Before I go any further with these adjectives, I have to come out as a devotee of narrative. For instance, I avoided Keri Hulme’s Bone People for a decade (more fool me) because reviewers described it as ‘lyrical’. Follow Me to Ground, I can tell you, woke me up the […]
How to Be a Person? Who shall I be? How ought I to live? Art is full of questions – answers are for other, more didactic domains. Really? On a spring day at the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft I met the typographical prints of Sister Corita Kent, and you could call hers the […]
A pair of speakers whirs on a stand in a forest of such stands, at different heights, humming at different electronic pitches under the high cupola. Otherworldly. We wander into St Mary-in-the-Castle in silence, as instructed. Guide ropes mark out where we can and can’t walk in the space. Giant tripods hold their thin rod-arms […]
The book on my table … Published 3 July 2017 and refusing to take its place in any to-be-read sequence, Olumide Popoola’s new novel bursts out from line one, just as its gorgeous cover promises. This isn’t a review or even a preview – more a shout-out of enthusiasm and congratulations. For a powerful taste […]
When I visited the refugee camp in Calais with Olumide Popoola – conducting research for our book, breach – I imagined a day when the place named the “Jungle” would no longer exist. We’d all prefer, wouldn’t we? that those forced to flee their own countries receive protection, safe passage and opportunities to build new lives. With none […]
As editor and co-author of breach, Meike Ziervogel and I presented at the Babel Festival of Literature in Translation, held in the galleried Teatro Sociale of Bellinzona, Switzerland in September 2016. Like its print offspring, Specimen Press, Babel is the creation of director and poet Vanni Bianconi. In London as a Second Language, Vanni walks the reader through […]
