Himalayan view. Photograph Sudeep Sen by Sudeep Sen It was good to wake up to the silence of the Himalayas this morning. The shifting grey palette of the clouds was an antithesis to the recent tsunami of stimuli. The pleated, opalus ridges hid their pine-green veneer in obfuscating skies. The…

It did not spin like a normal coin, losing energy to the friction of the wood. It spun with a velocity that defied Newtonian physics, gaining momentum from the very air it displaced. Illustration WordPress by Yogesh Patel The penthouse was less a residence than a vaulted reliquary, a glass-and-steel carbuncle grafted onto…

Heiko Khoo’s Karl Marx Walking Tours. Photo credit Heiko Khoo ‘For me, the key question is to reinvigorate a culture of discussion and debate’ Interviewed conducted by Phil Hall, Paul Halas and Gordon Lidl Phil Hall: Hi, Heiko. Thank you for joining us. How are you doing? Heiko Khoo: I’m very well,…

Roadside mango Snack in Mexico. Photograph Miguel González Freshness without friction is boring by Arun Kapil Manek Chowk doesn’t ease into the day. It detonates. Heat rises off cobbled stone. Diesel coughs. Metal shutters slam open. Somewhere behind you, something is already frying. In front of you, fruit – piled…

Alexandrian Tramway in the Rain. Photograph Mohamed Hozyen Ahmed, Public Domain  By Adel Darwish Founded by Alexander and once governed by Cleopatra, Alexandria became a beacon of learning and cosmopolitan exchange. Today, in the name of development, the city’s physical memory is being dismantled — and the Ramleh tram is…

S Jaishankar in Vienna (2023). Photograph Dean Calma / IAEA, Wikimedia Commons “We are very much wedded to strategic autonomy because it’s very much a part of our history and our evolution. It’s something which is very deep, and it’s something which cuts across the political spectrum as well.” —…

The USA and Iran at High Noon Will Lindsey Graham Get His Rocks Off? by Richard Steinhardt What would unleashing a war against Iran do? It would be a tremendous act of self-mutilation. The arteries of global energy trade would narrow and launch the Western economic system into a severe…

The beautifully pedestrianised centre of Abingdon in 1969. Thank you town planners. Photograph Tony Hall This horrific geopolitical act would plunge us back in time to Abingdon in the late 1960s By Richard Steinhardt If the USA attacks Iran, Iran will destroy the oil installations in the Arabian Gulf and…

An Amexican Quilt. Generated by WordPress The Coming Break up of the USA by Phil Hall Mexico, not the UK, not Canada, not Germany, not China, is the USA’s most important partner: its most important trading partner to the fertile south with a border thousands of kilometres long. And 50%…

Not all brains work perfectly and survive life’s turbulent journey. Photograph by Amel Uzunovic The Brain Dear Reader Have you ever thought about your own brain, this mysterious organ, controlling all your actions, intentions, emotions, memories and feelings? Sitting up there in your skull, working to make your legs walk,…

by Roger Murphy He watched the story unfold in the papers. The first report appeared the day after he arrived, the last just as he left. The whole tragedy spanned the two weeks he spent in Cork, sorting through his mother’s effects and tying up the loose ends of her…

As you get on the bus, there is no fuss. A seat with priority is there. Photograph Phil Hall Poems by John Grant I Do Like a Ham Sandwich I do like a ham sandwich with slices of tomato, But a sandwich of roast chicken, no stuffing.That’s the way to…

by John Grant I’m a little gnomeSitting on a stoneWaiting for the national elf to phone.“I am the most important national elf!There is no one more important than myself.But I have a little problem that is quite upsetting my life.Someone broke into the palace;Stole off with my fairy wife.“My elfin…

Reagan sitting with people from the Afghanistan Pakistan region in February 1983. Photograph Michael Evans, Public Domain by Phil Hall Because of the actions of Israel, which is a settler state founded in May 1948, in the same month, in fact, when Apartheid was formally instituted in South Africa, nearly…

Tophet Salambo Carthage Tunisie. Photograph Patrick Giraud Wikimedia Commons The scribe once more I am once again the standing scribewith a heart beginning to rustby decision of unreachable gods.I write like this and here simply, stubbornly,to breathe in the memory of some others,for in this brush or reed or pencil…

Photograph Luis Aguiar Keynote Lecture Delivered at the “Third International Colloquium on Poetry and Philosophy: Sensibility is Thought,” coordinated by the Mexican writer Ulises Paniagua, with the support of various universities, cultural centers, publishing houses, and the Economic Culture Fund. “The philosopher thinks better than they write, and the writer…

Photo by Nikhil Singh Rajput on Pexels.com Quite a few Rooi Baba flew towards Dabbo now and then, as she swung on the tyre, looking at the Madar plants growing along the side of her house, releasing cotton-like flowers into the air. She stretched her hands trying to catch them…

Photograph by Emmanuel Newton Part of you knew you’d end up here with Alec, with his tongue inside your mouth but part of you’d held out hope that you wouldn’t. You know this kind of thinking is naïve. That the dreams spooling from your head are snakes, and he’s in…

Zorhan Anchevski. Photograph courtesy of the author ZORAN ANCHEVSKI (b. 1954) — poet, translator, essayist, and scholar — has published ten books of poems. His awards include: Studentski Zbor, for best first book of poems (1984); the international poetry award Giacomo Leopardi in Italy (2004), The Miladinov Brothers, the most…

SUGANDHA DAS is a young poet who founded ‘Mildly Offensive Content’, in 2013, among India’s earliest performance-poetry collectives. With poets from around the world, they staged over 300 shows across the country and helped shape India’s spoken-word landscape. She has lived in far-flung areas of India, finding elegance and beauty…

Senator Joseph McCarthy. Photo Credit, United Press – Library of Congress, Public Domain Bogie Versus the Committee by Norman B. Schwartz There is a common misconception that it was the malevolent Senator Joseph McCarthy who was responsible for destroying the careers and lives of many an actor, writer and director during the…

David, with proud members of his family. Photograph Margaret Yip by David Yip After seven years living in Gran Canaria, I returned home with a couple of suitcases to live in Barrow. Once again, I sold everything I owned—from my car to my TV and even a full tropical fish…

Renee Good, 26 seconds before the ICE agent shot her dead. Photograph Jonathan Ross – Alpha News, Public Domain R.I.P. | 1988-2026 by Sudeep Sen RENEE GOOD R.I.P. | 1988-2026 Minus one-degree centigrade    in the Himalayan Almora tonight — ICE predicted it would frost over.     I sit bundled…

Photograph by Coppertist Wu by Amal Chatterjee This is the story he told me. Exactly. I have changed nothing, except perhaps the names, places and the events. Otherwise everything is as he said.             I came to Amsterdam for love, he said, the gold ring on his finger glinting as…

Detail from William Blake, The Temptation and Fall of Eve, 1808, Google Cultural Institute Public Domain Can we be bothered to save the Earth? by Pete Field If there is a personal deity then they (non-sexist pronoun) have a well-developed sense of humour. Is the old Testament the ultimate and funniest…