LONDON GRIP international cultural magazine
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ART EXHIBITIONS ON
LONDON GRIP:
Watercolours: A Late-Life Adventure
Cathy MacAulay-Cornish installation:
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EXHIBITIONS
Michael Davenport reviews SEDUCED
Art in ROMANIA:
on Cantacuzino
Hadrian & Babylon at the British Museum
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FILM, THEATRE, MUSIC
Helen Donlon on female sexuality in Brian De Palma's
The Black Dahlia & Body Double
Helen Donlon on film director Philippe Garrel
Helen Donlon on Ibiza
Patricia Morris
Pamela Nomvete interviewed by Jessica Campbell
B.J.Rahn on Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream
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POLITICS, ECONOMICS & SOCIETY
ECONOMY
Michael Davenport on the recession
AFRICA
IRAQ
Hayder Abdul-Hussein an anthropologist in Basra
SOUTH AFRICA
Patricia Morris
David Philips on the
on men and women
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PSYCHOTHERAPY
Jane McChrystal on appropriate choices
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THE WORD
Michael Davenport
Two poems for our times
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SPORT
Sheena Blackhall
A Mother Worries
It’s Saturday, near midnight.
You’ve been a month in Norway,
A country eaten by fjords with wolvine teeth.
Have you found a decent room?
You’ll enter a bar alone
They’ll think you’re Georgian.
Beer there costs an arm and a leg
Winter’s long and dark as a bear’s mouth.
Is there a laundrette near?
You’ll order a gin and tonic
You’ll try English, Scots, a smattering of Thai.
The bar tender will reply in Bokmal or Nyorsk.
You’ve crossed the sea like a bird
To King Harald’s kingdom of fish, forests and oil
This is your feeding ground now.
Their currency’s the krone. It won’t stretch far.
Never forget that these are a Viking people.
Who are their heroes? Ibsen, Edvard Munch,
Visionaries of illness, madness and death
Always making a saga out of a sigh
Though you will not be troubled by vampires,
Elk and deer may commandeer the highway
Regardless of traffic signs
Elk are active during a full moon,
And after a heavy snow fall.
If you upset an elk, you should contact
A Sami shaman, who will sing a joik
To sooth the ruffled feelings of the animal.
Hardanger fiddles are topped
With the carved heads of beasts.
Their music is heavily polyphonic
Will you dance to their tune?
What will they change in you?
A mother worries.
Sheena Blackhall
Sheena Blackhall is a prize-winning writer, illustrator, traditional ballad singer and storyteller in North East Scotland. From 1998-2003 she was Creative Writing Fellow in Scots at Aberdeen University's Elphinstone Institute. She has published four Scots novellas, ten short story collections, sixty poetry collections and two of her plays have been televised. (Portrait: oil painting by Mike Knowles)
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Christoph Warrack
From the Bridge
One day I'll find out
When you drive over
That big bridge beyond Bristol
What all those cars are doing there
There must be nine, ten,
Eleven thousand of them
In gleaming rows
Stretched out in blocks
Around a factory.
At the edge of the lot
The manmade peters out
And a broad sandbank
Slopes down to an estuary
And that out to the channel
Of course if I wasn't in a car
I wouldn't even know to ask
Christoph Warrack
A London-based filmmaker and social entrepreneur, Christoph Warrack’s short films have been shown in six countries. He runs a fortnightly film club for homeless people in Soho, which welcomes international filmmakers, who have included Ken Loach, Pawel Pawlikowski and Mike Leigh, to introduce their work. He’s developing several new drama projects, and an online archive of filmmaker interviews. He reviews films for the Times Literary Supplement.
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Mahmood Jamal
I found U
I was afraid of losing
Your love
I lost your love.
Then, I was afraid of
Losing your friendship;
I lost your friendship.
Then I was afraid
Of losing my fear;
I lost my fear.
And
Then I found U
And lost myself!
©Mahmood Jamal 2008
Mahmood Jamal
Mahmood Jamal is a poet and film-maker and has been involved with the London Poetry scene for over 30 years. He is the editor and translator of the Penguin Book of Modern Urdu Poetry. His latest volume of poetry SUGAR-COATED PILL has won wide acclaim. He is currently editing and translating Islamic Mystical Poetry for Penguin Books.
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LONDON GRIP POETRY
edited by FRED D’AGUIAR
FRED D’AGUIAR,
the American-
based Guyanese-British
poet, playwright and
novelist, has received
awards from, amongst others, the Malcolm X
Prize for Poetry, the
Whitbread Prize for a
first novel, the David
Higham Fiction Award
and the James Tait
Black Memorial Prize
for Fiction.
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LONDON GRIP
POETRY
SUBMISSION
GUIDELINES
To submit work to be
considered for publication
in London Grip Poetry,
email 3 to 5 poems of any
length up to 35 lines,
either as a Word Doc
attachment or in the body
of your email. Please
add three short sentences
about yourself.
Email
Poems must surprise us. Poems should continue to yield
riches when read once, twice, three times.
We welcome poems which engage with form. We welcome
poems whose formal and experimental properties
remain alternative and not featured in the mainstream of
poetry. Our remit as readers remains wide open and
as inclusive as possible.
F.D.
Sheena Blackhall
Christoph Warrack
Mahmood Jamal
24 november 2008
LONDON GRIP POETRY edited by ROBERT VAS DIAS
NEW: Alex Josephy
LONDON GRIP POETRY edited by London Grip magazine