Next week I am starting a new research project: a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, tracing translations of Latin American guerrilla ‘mountain literature’ by Anglo-American poetry networks, from 1960 to the present, & thinking about this poetry in terms of ecopoetics and radical Latinx environmentalisms. These images are to get the blog started. They were taken… Continue reading Zapatismo Now & Then (México DF & San Franciso)
Category: Travel
Route 57 Issue 15 (2019). Environs: Modern Natures
Welcome to the fifteenth anniversary edition of Route 57, the University of Sheffield’s creative writing journal. This issue contains innovative poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction from Sheffield’s finest writers. Issue 15 of Route 57 takes inspiration from the exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield, ‘Modern Nature’, to explore the relationships between urban environments and the natural… Continue reading Route 57 Issue 15 (2019). Environs: Modern Natures
Mexican Democracy
In July 2018, I was part of the UK delegation to observe the Mexican electoral process, organised by the Mexican pro-transparency network RUCD (Red Universitaria y Ciudadana por la Democracia) and the London-based group Justice Mexico Now. I wrote up the experience in a diary blog piece for the London Review of Books blog, and… Continue reading Mexican Democracy
Street Scripture: Madrid, London, Barcelona, Sheffield, Granada
Sketches from here & then
Nov. 2015. London. Lunch in the Somertown Community Centre on Ousselton street. Spicy chicken wrap, coffee and iced sponge cake: £5. Kraftwerk’s ‘The Model’ comes on the radio. ‘She’s playing her game and you can hear them say / She is looking good, for beauty we will pay.’ Momentary contentment felt as benediction both taken… Continue reading Sketches from here & then
A memory of a day in NY, found in an old notebook
Bought coffee from a man from Oaxaca off Central Park, walked there and drank it. Sun + clouds; made fun of by a gang of Dominican teenagers. Walked to Greenwich Village/Soho, McNally’s bookshop. Managed not to buy poetry pamphlets. Coffee + Bolaño. In Central Park were red & grey little birds that looked like cockatoos… Continue reading A memory of a day in NY, found in an old notebook
Sketches Andaluz
18.03.12. Perfect sunset coming down over Andalucía, descending in time with the plane. Large lakes with jagged, jig-sawed edges, and a fading pink which stretches beyond the coast. Talked with Anas and Luisa, a Spanish/English couple. Romantic mountains gathering mist. A minute later the pink is orange and reduced, though broader bands of pink cirrus… Continue reading Sketches Andaluz
‘Present Imperfect’ for Banner
Further flogging an ageing donkey: an article mined from several of the blogposts below appeared in the very new and very excellent Banner. The piece concerns Guatemalan history and politics, with a focus on the city of Xela and the language school Proyecto Linguistico Quetzalteco. PDF of the issue in print here; my article is… Continue reading ‘Present Imperfect’ for Banner