It is a sad yet understandable truth that most people switch off when they hear the word ‘Iraq’. As I research this article, I read that a lorry has been driven into the heart of the old Sadriya market of central Baghdad. It was carrying an entire ton of explosives, extraordinary even by Baghdad standards. The explosion ripped through the crowded marketplace, shattering stalls and leaving a huge crater which was the grave for one hundred and thirty people. It injured a further three hundred. Despite the fact that this death toll was more than double that of the July 7th London bombings (which killed fifty-two), it is highly unlikely that you will recall the incident. On the day it occurred your eyes, like mine, may have flittered over the headline, blank and unsurprised, but that would be it.

W.H.Auden, were he alive, would be 100 this year. He said once: “In spite of all this einsam rubbish, poets are no lonelier than anyone else. Poetry itself is lonely, of course, in the sense that few people read it.” This is typical Auden, levelling mythical superstructures with a single quip; honest to the bitter end, even when that honesty meant admitting the uselessness of his own occupation (’poetry makes nothing happen’) or consigning a whole poem to the bin, as he did with ‘September 1, 1939′ because it was, as he put it, ‘infected with an incurable dishonesty’. But since his death in 1973 Auden’s reputation, which was dogged during his life by criticism of his flight to America after the beginning of the War, has enjoyed a popular revival. This renewed interest- an interest that is genuinely popular and not just scholarly-most probably rests on the appeal of just two poems from Auden’s entire output: “Stop all the clocks” and the previously mentioned “September 1, 1939″.

Technological advances have rid humanity of many of its most malignant scourges. Some diseases, like Smallpox, have been virtually eradicated. Ancient killers like Measles, Rubella, and Polio have been tamed beyond recognition, in the ‘developed’ world at least. There are even optimistic whispers among the scientific community of the “Achilles’ heel of HIV” revealing a potential Aids vaccine. Science however, has only stretched so far. Millions of hearts will break tonight as loved ones slip from their grasp. Many families will watch in agony as those closest to them slowly crumble into a coma or vegetative state; stripped of dignity, paralysed by pain, an incapacitated shell of their former selves. Technology cannot save all.

Horse Latitudes is an uncomfortable book, spatially speaking. Although Paul Muldoon’s latest collection is full of geographical references we are frequently made to feel that the world is very small, tied together in disquieting ways. Despite the poet’s reputation as an academic prankster and mock-pedant, in which he charmingly revelled in his recent reading at York, there is no mistaking the darkening tone of these poems. Here death is a major concern, and it is everywhere, inescapable.

For the techno-fetishist of the 80s cyberpunk culture, Tokyo is the City. It is vast and incomprehensible, yet depressing and exhilarating too. It is the future: a mass of concrete, asphalt, and neon signs that expands almost infinitely–a human creation that has attained an inhuman life of its own. That being said, it is interesting to notice that “Godzillas” and other “ends of the world” have apparently menaced the city throughout its living history. Of all the meanings the super-city embodies, the urge to destroy it is the integral corollary to its allure: a result of all the intellectual machinations–desires, metaphors, elaborations—attached to the juxtaposition of human flesh and urban context.

The global arms trade is the largest sector of spending in the world. It is worth around a trillion dollars anually, a figure that corresponds to about $170 for every person on the planet, and increases every year. The income generated for producers of weapons is massive, and the geopolitical importance of strategic arms sales cannot be overstated. At what costs do we pursue economic and strategic supremacy using this deadly trade? Can we ever justify such actions?

In 1984, American author William Gibson published Neuromancer, a novel that was to herald the arrival of a new and influential subgenre of science fiction: cyberpunk. So what is, or was, “cyberpunk”? Novels classified as cyberpunk are invariably set in a dystopian future, where the laws of an oppressive society are enforced by extensive computer technology. The “-punk” suffix refers to the heroes of the genre: lawless rebels who subvert the technological dominance of major corporations in order to scratch out an existance for themselves.

If you are celebrating this year as the bicentennial of an end to slave trading in this country, you are celebrating a false cessation. In our consciousness, the dust which covers the exchange of human life as property also buries the fascinations of ancient wars, witch hunts and the bubonic plague. The two-hundredth anniversary of its abolition is far too late a date to scrape away this forgetful apparition and finely scrutinise the wretched reality underneath. Today, slavery is still thriving and alive beneath the surface.

The greatest flaw of British post-war drama is arguably its unabating commitment to realism. While on the continent dramatists such as Samuel Beckett, Berthold Brecht, Eugene Ionesco or Jean Genet were breaking the boundaries of drama with radical new forms and theories, Britain was already unsettled by the likes of Osborne. Even as innovations such […]

The word “globalisation” summons a great deal of conflict. After asking people what the word meant to them, I was left with a large listing of emotive connotations describing unethical and greedy groups of collective power which exploit any means to maximise their own personal interests. This far from flattering catalogue was combined with fears of possible deterioration of our cultural heritage. I have personally found the so called “advancements in communication technology and the integration of international markets” a bit of a nuisance as my computer’s spell checker automatically changes the word globalisation to globalization each time I type it. Nevertheless, is this word simply misunderstood and could this liberalising phenomenon that is making our world smaller be the answer to issues such as world poverty and better futures for all?

Magical realism is a literary mode of which Salman Rushdie makes extensive use in his novels, often to convey a political message. It is a technique in which the author presents realistic characters, settings, and events but with elements of the fantastic or mythical which are accepted as a normal part of the world: for example, flying carpets and genies in an otherwise realistic environment. The question I want to address is whether the use of magical realism is actually an effective tool for putting across a political message.

Whenever globalisation is debated, the arguments generally fall (very) broadly into two categories: the Marxist and the liberal. The Marxist view is that globalisation is a form of exploitation, even colonisation. The liberal view is that the opening up of free markets allows progress in the poorest parts of the world: modern capitalism will lead to stronger economies, wealth generation, more equality and greater cooperation the world over. In this article, I will challenge both views.

Writing words on the way other words were written covers a broad range of academic activity, from semantics and linguistics to literary theory and the classics; this does not mean to say that doing so, writing on writing, can be anything other than the apogee of hermeneutic schizophrenia. Take immortality, a notion on which much has been written. We have accepted that, ultimately, our political, theological, philosophical and even scientific strife has been on account of our effort to attain physical immortality. And yet any relevant rhetoric is currently in denial; all disciplines unanimously declare that ‘we will always be mortal’, and then indulge in all the aforementioned research activity aiming at the contrary. Alternative ways of negotiating immortality do exist of course, albeit only in the realms of megalomanic medical paranoia and mental disorder.

It is strange, how the sun seems to shimmer on
The grass, as though it were a bed of heaven-sent
Butterflies, emerging triumphant from the discarded
Chrysalis. Up above, amidst the darting and dashing
Thrushes, clouds recede until the sky is a bare naked blue.

That we live in the age of globalisation is announced so often that the news has become almost meaningless. Near endless column inches have been written trumpeting the arrival of our brave new “Global Village”. Writing in Newsweek last year the Prime Minister declared that “complaining about globalisation is as pointless as trying to turn back the tide.” So what is this Globalisation, so inevitable that it warrants comparison with an intractable natural phenomenon?