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The house is filled with paintings; landscapes, clouds, an assortment of the ‘okes’, many of Ganesh. Also people, are they her children, her friends, the friends that she has made in her solitariness?

They are beautiful these paintings, the colours are soft, there does not appear to be anything harsh in them. Have you always been an artist, or is this something new?

I love art, all art; I have always loved it, particularly the more classical. I am not that keen on the modernists. I know and understand that they are attempting to tell me something but I am never certain what it exactly is. Yes, they talk, but not necessarily to me, and we all have to listen to our own voices. But to answer the question, no, I only started painting after I had the strokes. (continue reading…)

Walking the Tightrope: (Poetry and Prose by LGBTQ Writers from Africa) Lethe Press. 2016

Mark feels ill; he knows this feeling well, it always happens to him. He stands outside the building and looks up at the unlighted windows. I must have eaten something that is causing this pain. He walks forward to get a better view of the steel gate that cars use to get in and out of the unit. To the right of the gate is a pedestrian gate, it too is made of steel. He turns his head to look at it. (continue reading…)

A story for Cyril … : a narrative, and a valuable story, based on a part of his life.

Barbara sits down opposite me. We are in a coffee shop in Killarney, the Europa. I have been here many times but not in the recent past. It has changed somewhat. The Jews of Killarney are still here, elderly women and men who have lived here for aeons, it is, but used to be more so, a very Jewish suburb, but now there are many more of Islamic extract. I supposed that both a Shul and a Mosque are close by. The Shul is old, the Oxford Shul, I’m not sure that many people still go there, and the Mosque is further away, but still close, up in Houghton. The same people, almost the same features, just different religions, and even some fashionable looking young women, but nowadays they are black and white, not just white.

“Do we make this like an interview? How will it work?”

She sits down on the chair opposite me and takes out a notebook, nothing else, just one notebook. (continue reading…)

http://www.artsy.net/artist/peter-beard 

In November 2013, Peter Beard, born in 1938 so now aged seventy five, suffered a stroke. This information was conveyed to the press by Njema Beard, his wife, manager and the curator of his legacy. For many years there have been rumours of divorce, accusations of Beard’s sexual involvement with his daughter Zara, of whom Njema is the mother, and yet she is still there, still a part of the end of his game, keeping a living memory of what was, is and what will be. And this story: a short yearning for more, and an understanding of life’s defeat.

I do not know Peter Beard; but I have been captivated by his photographs and the stories of his mythological, wild and insouciant life for a long time. Why, his photographs are colonially transgressive, his diaries are a pop artist’s excitement, his decadent and illusive life is enviable? (continue reading…)

http://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/the-9-lives-of-ray-the-cat-jones-a-novel-by-stewart-home/

The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones: A novel by Stewart Home (Test Centre, 2014)
In June 2013 Stewart Home, an (in) famous London author/writer/performer, receives a parcel. There is no return address on it; or a name to indicate who the person who sent it is, but Home is excited for there are few who use the postal service nowadays; it must be something of value (not economic but fundamental). He unwraps it and inside is a manuscript; it is the story (auto? biography?) of Ray the Cat Jones, a notorious cat burglar who worked out of London in the 50’s and 60’s. Strange and coincidental, Home is doing research into Ray Jones, has been for a few years, for he is intrigued and fascinated by the life of this politically aware criminal (they share the same politics, both loathe the bourgeoisie, the ‘toffs’, the ‘gits’, the rich who profit because of their vicious, evil (no not evil this smacks of Christianity) exploitation of the working class) and (is this important) Ray Jones is his first cousin once removed. Home’s mother, Julia Callan (she visited Ray the Cat in prison, not often but more than once) was the daughter of Ray Jones mother’s sister (I think). Julia Callan, a one-time ‘good time’ girl who partied with Christine Keeler, (rumour has it that at some stage in the good time John F Kennedy came to London, he grooved in these circles, and nine months after he left town Julie Callan had a child, Llewellyn, born in, not sure when, but born sometime around the time that Home was born).

And so I wonder: Who speaks this novel? Who writes this novel? (continue reading…)