Almost Island

Still from King Vidor's The Crowd

Newly available on the net, the remarkable Almost Island, an annual international literary periodical from India. It includes work by Adil Jussawalla, Christian Bobin, Alison Anderson, Miljenko Jergovic,Russell Scott Valentino, Sharmistha Mohanty, Sun Ganlu and Vahni Capildeo.

I myself have this piece in it. It rambles (boy, how it rambles, but then rambling is its raison d'être) from a naked child under a table, through André Kertész and King Vidor's The Crowd, considering names, pseudonyms and presences of various kinds, enjoying a few puns in Sim City and envies the Irish poet Rita Ann Higgins.

It has only just arrived. I always look forward to reading Mohanty and Capildeo. The rest are a pleasure in waiting.

*

A lovely thing today. I teach poetry to an undergraduate group, a particularly splendid bunch this semester, and among the early things we talk about is subject. I ask them to think about why there are far more poems about love, death and the moon than there are about embarrassment and plastic cups. So now they have put together an anthology devoted to plastic cups - and it's good! I think happiness is moments like this.