There is distance in experience, we as observers and Others as victims, and with that comes the distance in our ability to understand their pain. For that reason it seems rather voyeuristic for the well-meaning masses to co-opt the private tragedy of Aylan Kurdi’s death and transform it into a moment of public grief. This is not our struggle. Aylan was not our child. He did not die in order for us to have an emotional and political experience. Yet that is exactly what is happening.

i.m. Alison Stoddart (1980–2012) It’s a sign of the full force and audacity of the Modernists (I’m using this term, slackly perhaps, both for the writers themselves and for their institutionalisation via Kenner and the rest) that, even now, and after all of what’s been, theirs are the lines I reach for in self-justification.

Between the words ‘I’ve got some bad news’ and those that follow lies an interminable space. Time stretches. The mind focuses. The body tenses. Then J said the words, ‘M died.’ It was a death both expected and unexpected. Others shrugged at the news.

Waltzing with Jack Dancer: a slow dance with cancer Poems by Geoff Goodfellow Story by Grace Goodfellow Wakefield Press This review is dedicated to Guido Schivella, who lost to cancer in 2008, and to Charisse Mitchell, who will beat cancer in 2011. Cancer is indiscriminate, picking its battles with seeming randomness. There are hypothesised causes: […]