Category Archives: Uncategorized

Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock was my first encounter zeugma. Blink and you miss it. Belinda, our flaky heroine, applies war-paint for a ball at Hampton Court, as black omens of dire disaster threaten to ‘stain her honour, or her new brocade’ and perhaps she will ‘lose her heart, or necklace.’ In his 1692 ‘Discourse Concerning theContinue reading “Land of Confusion: Heather Phillipson’s INSTANT-fLEX 718”

I’m lucky if I’ve got the milk and nappies to see me through the day and, where I once tried to stem the rising tide of plastic fantastic, I’m now resigned to sit in the surf, knowing that to put a be-socked foot wrong will result in howling pain (the smallest toys are the deadliest). So, I’d rather assumed thatContinue reading “Butcher’s Dog”

Lisa Jardine’s excellent Worldly Goods challenges the view that galleries are secular temples, and that we should approach the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, with a reverential hush. Not according to Jardine. She writes that, in the Renaissance, ‘Clients commissioning important and ostentatiously expensive works would stipulate particularly high-grade ultramarine in their contract with the chosen painter.’ So, when DomenicoContinue reading “Video Games: Vidyan Ravinthiran’s Grun-tu-molani”

Standing in front of an officer of the law wearing nothing but pants is a sobering experience and, even when innocent, it’s hard not to look guilty, not to feel guilty, when he steps inside and starts searching. I was woken in the small hours by frenzied banging. Back then I lived on a narrowboat andContinue reading “I fought the law – Colette Bryce’s The Whole & Rain-domed Universe”

The infantryman’s spade is a symbol of his relationship with the earth. Our eyes are drawn to the assault rifle but he spends more time digging than he does fighting. However, once the conflict’s rolled away, the earth, once life-preserving, changes character. On August 15th, 1998, the Irish Times’ Padraic Convery, reporting on unexploded ordnance in Laos, wrote that: ‘In one village an entire familyContinue reading “When I am laid in earth – Kevin Powers’ Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting”

Gormley’s Angel of the North feels like a guardian. Angels were not always sanitized cuties, flitting about on Tinkerbell wings. Exodus offers instead an Angel of Death and the Archangel Michael sits atop Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo, as legend has it that he sheathed his sword there to signal the end of the 590 plague. More recently, David Almond’sContinue reading “I am a Bird Now – Liz Berry’s Black Country”

Last summer was filled with the poetry of Terrance Hayes and notably with his Friday: Poem. Like the outrageous conceits of Donne’s The Flea, it’s hard not to fall in love with Hayes’ fabulous erection: ‘There is no escaping / Spring’s drug. A young man will take the escalator / to the scalp of a ten-story buildingContinue reading “Bullet in the Head – Frederick Seidel’s Nice Weather”

Façades do not present us at our best, no matter how carefully coiffured, or disarmingly déclassé. Take Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre: as a Carolean redux of Rome’s Theatre of Marcellus, it’s imperial – self-consciously theatrical. Knowing that its architect, Sir Christopher Wren, employed an ingenious system of self-supporting beams to achieve a flat ceiling hardly helps, as walkingContinue reading “Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes: Penny Boxall’s Ship of the Line”

BEFORE THE RAIN CAME Our ring road is a forced marriage of IKEA sky once held together by medieval beams. Many times my city has walked through me and turned to stone in my eyes when I took a piss on Spon Street. A pub served mead the old way here, landlords made way forContinue reading “Urban Hymns – Joseph Horgan’s & Antony Owen’s The Year I Loved England”

Curtal sonnet on the curtal sonnet In crystal, snowflakes, frost, a tight-furled   sunflower’s spiral of hulls, a floret     of broccoli’s fractal beauty, such arrays and iterations! O baroque arranger of the world,   clockmaster, maker of matryoska, in secret     patterning stem, seed, atom, say that at the heart, the carpel core of the familiar   flower—red roseContinue reading “Counting the Stars: Richard Osmond’s Variant Air”