Jim Aitken presents an appreciation of the language, politics and class anger of Tom Leonard, and Peter Clive has contributed a poem about him, placed at the end of Jim's essay. Today we think of literature as providing inexhaustible forms and of language as being incredibly versatile and varied –…

It’s a new morning by Marilyn Francis It’s a new morningpay attentionto the pig’s headand its mouthful of fleshpay attentionto the workersin stolen trainersand nowhere to run. It’s a new morningover fieldsover orchardsand broke-back pickerspicking for next-to-nothingpay attentionto the babyripping up booksin his cot. It’s a new morningover Gotham Citya…

Leader of Irish Government Speaks Out Against Hyperbole after William Shakespeare by Kevin Higgins There has been much hyperbolic comment of lateabout the admittedly rather sad case of a man who had his new corneas removedby two blokes from Lithuaniaor Neilstown (somewhere like that) because he fell behind with the…