For Black History Month, here’s a story from a time and place that’s often been forgotten. Malambo is set in sixteenth-century Peru among artists, friars, healers, swindlers, silversmiths, traders and fisherfolk who just happen to be Black – alongside indigenous…
The last line of the refrain in the Welsh national anthem is O bydded i’r hen iaith barhau (“O may the old language endure” in W.S. Gwynn Williams’ translation). I remember learning it when I was about seven or eight;…
New poems by a woman who died over two millennia ago – of course I was interested. And this book does get off to a cracking detective-like start, which reminded me of a book I loved, Sisters of Sinai: What happens after…
“I write because I’m desperate and I’m tired, I can no longer bear the routine of being me and if not for the always novelty that is writing, I would die symbolically every day. But I am prepared to slip…
At Read Paper Republic, you can find a new Chinese writing every week for a year. The editors want to introduce Chinese short stories, essays and poems for free, to people who don’t know where to start. And they start…
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has a new book of poems out this month, first presented at the Edinburgh Book Festival, where I got my hands on a copy. The Other Mountain, published by Carcanet, includes a couple of…
