by admin | Dec 15, 2020 | Articles
La Perla is a shanty town sloping into the sea in Puerto Rico. Spotlighting the “culture of poverty”, it was this town that Oscar Lewis made famous in his book, La Vida, published in 1965. Mark Allen visited La Perla to see whether the picture had changed from that...
by admin | Dec 14, 2020 | Articles
Puerto Rico has an enormous drug addiction problem. A few years ago its government was so concerned that it set up a special drug prevention department. In the second of two articles on the island, Mark Allen explores the problem and shows where initiatives have been...
by admin | Dec 14, 2020 | Poetry
Cruellest April makes way for marvellous May mixing the memory, distorting the desire. For God has played his hand, shuffling a shipwreck of confusion with a sardonic smile, Lockdown meets longing. In the woods outside, the bluebells have bled their joy. And now the...
by admin | Dec 14, 2020 | Poetry
My fitness coach, Ian, all muscles and bathed in tattoos, back powered by a giant angel, talks of north-east Middlesborough, where he spent his hard-nosed youth. Punch-ups at the weekends, waiting outside clubs fuelled by voluminous vodka. The occasional visit to...
by admin | Dec 14, 2020 | Poetry
We sit in a congregation Lutheran, as it happens, In Sweden let me say, Listening to organ music, The sparkle of Christmas Lights twinkling In this bold Stockholm church And I keep thinking Is this a real community? The dark-haired woman in front Places her hand on...
