The news that Barclays has paid a 1% tax rate on a massive £6 billion profit, at a time when the poor and middle-class in Britain are being subjected to astonishingly severe ideological cuts is appalling. Okay - but beyond the editorials - What Is To Be Done? So long as the people of Britain allow the financial services industries-Tories-capitalism to dictate what's good for us, there is no hope. We see the future - one with a two-tiered health service; minimal welfare; sold-off forests; little or no cultural funding - a Big Society where the Big own and run and enjoy the society, and the rest of us, underfoot, foot the bills. I wonder when the British will radicalise sufficiently to speak out against this established unfairness - and topple it.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
Comments