By Sunday we couldn’t afford to delay: the both of us knew that today was the day. Under-prepared for a premature birth, the doctors—to thwart us—thought it would be worth attaching our mum to an alcohol IV… So the three of us were inebrious by Monday. Now, I’m not bonny and I’m not blithe, and… Keep Reading
I was born in the Soviet Union but my family roots are a mixture of Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish and Georgian. My early years coincided with the ‘Khrushchev Thaw’ in which two interconnected but different subcultures, jokingly referred to as the ‘physicists’ (those engaged in technical sciences) and the ‘lyricists’ (writers, philosophers, artists, theatre and film… Keep Reading
I was no young wire-walker out of a Barnum sideshow. I taught music, turned the handle like a monkey for the organist. . A not-so nubile sixty three and soon for the women’s workhouse, I rolled the barrel out, scraped the river bottom with the pitched rim of it. . Good oak and iron to… Keep Reading
Dolorem ipsum, Isabel del Rio’s latest book is a homage to the victims and casualties of the 2020 pandemic. Isabel, on reading it’s clear to me that this new book was produced speedily as a response to the COVID-19 situation. But it doesn’t feel like it was put together in haste. How was it possible… Keep Reading
