Becoming Human in Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Paintings
It was New Year’s Day, 1569, and the Imperial Court of the Holy Roman Empire was alive with festive splendour: populated by an eclectic coterie of entertainers, furnished with exotic menageries, and known for its elaborate five-course banquets, it would have been an absolute feast for the senses o
Wisteria
Love never came and raved but bent low and whispered: spring wisteria that once dipped its neck to press its pretty face to yours. You bent too, to listen, and every building stooped to see your sunlit form find silence in the street. ∎ Words by James Turner. Art by Betsy McGrath.
Love Et Cetera
There is nothing sexy about tardiness, I remind my date as she rocks up outside the cinema a full ten minutes after our scheduled meeting time. And yet there is something about her arrival that immediately injects our first encounter with an air of the erotic. Perhaps it is the effusive hug with whi
Thursday Night
Thomas settles into the most lived-in velvet on the train and says that he and Noelle might break up. I acknowledge the information with a nod and lift and lower the ball of my foot on the metro’s rubber flooring. The train’s pretty deserted. Thomas keeps pushing back the time he picks me up.
Giving Ukrainian Literature Its Due
As Ukraine faced renewed invasion by Russian forces in February 2022, the world’s gaze fixed on the nation with a new intensity. Swept into the spotlight amid a flood of battlefield reports, Ukrainian culture was recognised abroad in a way it had never been before. Exhibitions, concerts, bookshop
Lysanias
Setting: Between two columns. In a public square, at the temple steps. Between two dopaminergic neurons. In a cave somewhere lies some sort of plant, some coarse but reassuring bloom of green and – maybe red, some orange. A deep dark avernus feeds it, waters it in lolling, rolling laps up
Ugandan-Asian Food and Identity 50 Years On
“To remember a recipe and to produce in one’s kitchen the dish to which it refers – indeed to recall in a new time or place a taste one once savoured in another time and place – is to demonstrate a cultural memory and to ‘write’ oneself into history” (Dan Ojwang in ‘‘Eat pi
Tea-time: in conversation with Jen Monroe
Jen Monroe is a chef and artist whose project, Bad Taste, is committed to exploring new ways of thinking about food and consumption, approaching food as fantasy and as a transportive medium. Past work has included a dinner about the honey bee health crisis, a 100–square–foot edible map o
Scenes from the North
I We wrestle wind of Irish Sea Atop red raw sandstone, And gusts that wail like ghostly gales, A far, far cry from home. Grass purls, The fading coastline hurls Past tales, Crashing from mouths of caves. All of it now a memory, Washed out and veiled by waves. II In valleys hollowed by [&helli