Doubled Forging, or, Araki Yasusada and Why the West Wants Poems

To begin with, a story. Because, for us, here, the story is the important part.

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In late 1945, as the Allied powers began self-assuredly to map the contours of a new…

On Boredom, and Paying Attention to Karl Ove Knausgaard

I read an international bestseller this summer: the second volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle. Or, at least, so the front cover told me. It turns out that ‘international bestseller’ in the case of Knausgaard means something…

‘Own That Shit’: The Queer Celebration of Perversity

The Hoist was this glorious, irreverent, sacrilegious queer space for perverts, deviants, faggots, dissidents. These people didn’t fit in to the nice squeaky-clean image that so many gay people want to cultivate. It was the place for the…

Postcards from Copenhagen

The best places for me are those in which it is natural to be a stranger. These, more or less, are the words of Italo Calvino. And perhaps, torn between England and Italy, it is natural for me to be a stranger in Copenhagen. At least for a while.