This list comes courtesy of Robert Berold, to which I’ve made one subtraction and one addition! Aerodrome (updated online journal + 1 print issue/year) poetry and prose www.aerodrome.co.za [online + print] submissions: via website Botsotso (about 1 issue/year) poetry and prose PO Box 30952, Braamfontein, 2017 www.botsotso.org.za [online + print] submissions: [email protected] Chimurenga (2 issues/year) …
-Reviewed by Renn Hubbuck-Melly– As I stepped down into the basement venue of Nos Da, a broken floorboard bounced under my foot with a squeaky creak. There was a smell of chips in the air, and people were gathered around the stage at the back of the room. Laz Lazarus was reading his ever…
-Reviewed by Jemma Beggs- What better way to spend Friday 13th than attending ‘An Evening of Ghastly Delight’ in Cardiff’s charming Chapter Arts Centre? Hosted by Rebecca Parfitt, founder and editor of the wonderfully macabre literary magazine, The Ghastling, this was a celebration of “all things Gothic and a little bit strange”. The doorman had…
-Reviewed by Mab Jones- TimeHop tells Jackie Hagan that it is two years ago today when she was making the pitch for what eventually became this particular show – just before what happened happened, and she became ‘an amputee’. Or, “before my leg got lopped off”, as she puts it, in her inimitable, refreshingly no-nonsense…
– reviewed by James Webster – Shame is a highly ambitious and well-realised multi-disciplinary show. Created by John Berkavitch, this genre-bending show blends theatre, spoken word, hip hop, physical theatre, music and animation into a dizzying and highly accomplished performance. It begins with Berkavitch asking the audience the question ‘what are you most ashamed of’,…
– reviewed by James Webster – Richard Marsh‘s two-man poetry play is a marvel of wit and emotion. Like all good comedies, the gags flow thick and fast, rich with wit and dexterous wordplay. What makes it a great comedy is that the jokes are rooted in deep and powerful emotion, as Marsh twines together…
-Reviewed by Zara Raab– Named by The Asian Review of Books as one of the top women poets writing in China, Yu Xiang rarely makes historical or geographical references in I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust. She begins her second full-length book––her first was Exhale (2006)–– with ‘My House’, where she issues not…
-Reviewed by James Webster– The thrum of deep base sound ebbs away, leaving only a ring of tinnitus. The lights retreat to a dim glimmer, the shivers stop running down my spine, and the audience audibly exhale. We’re about two thirds of the way through Melanie Wilson‘s haunting multimedia poem, and she’s holding us on…
– Reviewed by Lettie McKie – Why you should celebrate Sage and Time … Three years ago I wrote a review (here) of the first time I ever when to London performance poetry event Sage and Time at the Charterhouse Bar next to Smithfield market. Masters of the warm welcome hosts Amy Acre and Anna…
-Reviewed by Afric McGlinchey– After the premature death of a lover, it would be easy to succumb to a tidal wave of bitterness and anguish. But, unlike Auden’s famous ‘Funeral Blues’ poem, where, in a rapture of grief, he exhorts the world to ‘stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’, Moore is more…