Alan Jenkins

Nov 27, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Amir-Hussein Radjy |Mark Glanville |Andrew Neilson |Alan Jenkins

The Egyptian poet Joyce Mansour was a leading member of the surrealist group around André Breton. An exile living in Paris, she often made a myth of her life. “I was born in 1928”, she once declared, “at the far end of ancient Greece.” She said her parents were first cousins – a claim that later biographers refuted – but the frisson of incest suited her. She wore heavy kohl and, a family member recalled, left “in her wake an intoxicating smell of jasmine” perfume.

Nov 27, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Mark Glanville |Amir-Hussein Radjy |Andrew Neilson |Alan Jenkins

Veroniki Dalakoura (b.1952) first came to the notice of her translator, John Taylor, after their mutual friend Elias Petropoulos alerted him to her work. It is easy to see how Petropoulos, bard of the rebetiko music of the Greek underworld, might have been drawn to Dalakoura’s shameless, fearless erotic voice and irreverent deconstruction of poetic conventions.

Nov 6, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Alan Jenkins

“The Lamentations of Mary Magdalene on the body of Christ” by Arnold Böcklin, 1868