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Graham Lock: Three Poems on Gaza
Shylock and Portia Address Benjamin Netanyahu Shylock: Hath not a Gazan eyes? Hath not a Gazan hands, organs, senses, passions? Are they not subject to typhoid, hunger and despair? If you bomb them, do they not bleed? When you speak of “safe zones” and “targeted strikes”, do they not laugh? If you starve them, do…
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Ruth Hobson: Three Poems
The King is Dead In 1536, a woman imagining the death of a kingwas to be drawn on a hurdle to the pyreand burned alive. Well, I don’t want him to die, Your Honour,I am just a Republican. But imagine, I can’t help … Imagine the death of a king, no more Kings,imagine the death…
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The City as Anti-Hero: Freidkin’s To Live and Died in L.A. – Neil Fulwood
7th August 2025 marks the second anniversary of the death of maverick filmmaker William Friedkin. CHAINLINK publishes a series of articles on his work throughout the month. By the mid-Eighties, William Friedkin’s star was in the descendant. The one-two punch of The French Connection and The Exorcist was a decade behind him. Sorcerer, his cripplingly over-budget remake of H.G. Clouzot’s The…
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Benjamin Zephaniah, Sitting Bull and a Sleepy Nation – Andy Croft
Effective oppositional spaces are rapidly disappearing. Democratic process is blocked by inequality, authoritarianism, deceit and a narrow ideological consensus. Constitutional and legal constraints on power, within and between nation states have no answer to violence, dishonesty and lawlessness. The Fourth Estate is browbeaten and cowed. Traditional forms of political participation (joining political parties, leaving political…
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Mu Cao: Poems translated by Hongwei Bao
Translator’s note:All the poems are translated from Chinese into English with Mu Cao’s permission. I have chosen to use small case to translate all of Mu Cao’s poems because Chinese characters do not make distinctions between big and small cases, and the nondescript small case would be truer to the spirit of Mu Cao’s poems….
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Mu Cao: Dark Chronicler of China’s Working-Class Queer Life – Hongwei Bao
For more than two decades, working-class queer Chinese Mu Cao 墓草 (b.1974, Henan, China) has been a unique voice in Chinese literature and global queer literature. Often referred to as a ‘folk poet’ and ‘a voice from the bottom of Chinese society’, his poems celebrate queer desire and migrant worker experience. A high school drop-out,…
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Fiona Robertson – Three Poems
Bittersweet I bathe in the bittersweetnessof ill sonsand bereaved friendsand strangers connectingand and and old friends back on trackand death in lifeand birth after deathand the limitations of languageand the beauty of wordsand pain with depthand the realness of me and all this turning upside downand creation from destructionand who’d have thought itand I wouldn’t…
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Gregory Woods – Three Poems
HOLDING STILL You imagine me standing at the windowwatching the fireworks above the harbourYou imagine me choking back the tears and the cocaineheartrate uncommonly highspirits expectedly lowYou imagine me burning your lettersand cursing the day that we metprecise about the date the time of daythe occasion in the lecture hallthe summer in Sardinia I’ve been…
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KLAUS MÄKELÄ: A massive hope for the future – Robert Kenchington
Emerging from the ruins of a Classical music industry broken by recession, COVID and post millennial gimmickry, is a phenomenal new artist who within the space of only five years has become the greatest conductor of the 21st century. His name is Klaus Mäkelä. Aged only 29, Mäkelä as both man and musician embodies the…
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WHAT. THE. ACTUAL? – HAUSU AND THE COMPLETE DERANGEMENT OF THE SENSES
About twenty minutes into Hausu – which translates, fairly obviously, as House, but which I’m going to refer to Hausu throughout this review purely to piss off autocorrect – seven friends hop off a train at a rural station and make for the middle-of-nowhere residence belonging to a relative. It’s so out-of-the-way that the montage depicting their journey vibes less…
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REVIEW: Release the Sausages! edited by Andy Croft (Culture Matters) – Neil Fulwood
There is a technique in poetry, borrowed from Apophatic Theology, called the via negativa, whereby attention is drawn to the subject by dint of its absence. This new anthology, subtitled Poems for Keir Starmer, takes the via negativa to its logical extreme. With painstaking aesthetic focus and laser-like editorial precision, Andy Croft has assembled a…
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Tuesday Shannon – Three Poems
On Belper Bridge At the plunge three blackened alder snagsreach for this final January morning. Unwavering against the crushing flow, waterfroths at each darkened trunk. A magpie circles, swoops,settles on a branch. It is four weeks since you died.The current persists. Leaving BrightonInsert Dedication Here Sunset tinges the sea fog blood orange.We drive the full…
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The Greenwash Recycle – Shaun Belcher
THE GREENWASH RECYCLE Starts in a marketing agency hand-out around the milleniumSocial demarcation and quantifying statistics showed newer markets More social class segmentation and new science of social media metricsIdentified new opportunities to market directly to the A B and C groups Especially those spending more time at home, the newly affluent mothersWork from homers…
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Martin Figura & Helen Ivory – HUM
Martin Figura and Helen Ivory . Commissioned for a performance at The National Centre for Writing, Dragon Hall, Norwich as part of the European Poetry Festival
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Martin Figura – Two Poems
Martin Figura – Foundling – A Poem
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REVIEW: My Secret Life: Selected Poems by Krisztina Tóth, trans. George Szirtes (Bloodaxe) – Neil Fulwood
REVIEW: My Secret Life: Selected Poems by Krisztina Tóth, trans. George Szirtes (Bloodaxe)
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A SUMMER CASE OF CULTURAL IRRELEVANCE : THE TLS – Nick Ingram
A SUMMER CASE OF CULTURAL IRRELEVANCE – The Tls – Nick Ingram
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The Timbre of Tucson: An Abundance of Music from the Old Pueblo- Mike Grover
Mike Grover on the Tucson Music Scene an in depth look.
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WICKER POETS? In Wicker land any fool can write.. Shaun Belcher
WICKERLAND? It’s like MOTHERLAND but without the humour.. more AMANDA writes poetry…..god help us all.
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Carlos Kleiber: The idol with feet of clay – Robert Kenchington
The slow death of Carlos Kleiber