Magnus McDowall’s cultural highlights

Magnus McDowall is a poet from London. His poems have appeared in magazines including Ink, Sweat and Tears and The Vanity Papers, and he has performed spoken word at Hidden Door Arts Festival and London’s Canal Dream Festival. He has also written for film and for Queens Park Rangers Football Club, whom he has supported since childhood.

Spoken Word: Pulling Faces by Zakariye

I recently attended the launch of Little Betty’s latest selection of pamphlets at London’s Camden Roundhouse. Unmissable among them, Birmingham’s mononymous Zakariye. His debut pamphlet Pulling Faces is aptly named – I have never seen the body used so well in a spoken-word performance as when he delivered his piece with the refrain ‘These Hands’. Each time he repeats the line, his face contorts and subtly changes the meaning of the line over the arc of the poem. My only caution to listeners and readers is that if you are a particularly sensitive Arsenal fan, you may want to skip the poem ‘I Would 8-2 Be You’.

https://www.zakariye.co.uk/gallery-1

Podcast: Have You Heard George’s Podcast? by George the Poet

Putting this into any one category feels like such an injustice, but it’s available on Spotify and calls itself a podcast, so we’ll go with that. The dramatic, standalone episodes ‘A Grenfell Story’ and ‘Once Upon a Time in Kampala’ are the best. His influences as a poet, academic and former rapper fuse across the whole into a new cross-genre form. His PhD supervisors even feature. I recommend checking out the forum Common Ground, which he set up for listeners to respond to the podcast as part of his thesis. Instead of Ts & Cs, new members are asked to agree to a Social Contract. Ambitious, but artfully done.

https://www.georgethepoet.com/podcast-library

Film: Burning (2018) directed by Lee Chang-dong

Is it a murder mystery or a psychological thriller? Does it matter if it’s this good? The adaptation of an adaptation was voted above Parasite for ‘greatest Korean film ever’ by Korean Screen. The affluent nightlife of Seoul’s twenty-somethings is juxtaposed with the distant loudspeaker propaganda and canvas greenhouses of protagonist Jong-Su’s home on the North Korean border. The jealousy of the film’s love triangle, mingled with the class tensions between Jong-Su and Ben, makes for a richly ambiguous narrative. Lee has taken Murakami’s short story ‘Barn Burning’, an adaptation of Faulkner’s story of the same name, and given it an ending with deliciously varying interpretations.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7282468/?ref_=mv_close

Literary Magazine: The London Magazine

Despite all the hand-wringing about the health of the poetry industry, London’s night-time magazine scene is booming. At least, that’s what my Instagram algorithm tells me, full of boozy poetry nights I’ve not been to. I can, however, vouch for The London Magazine’s events, which are genuinely fun. Their ‘Off the Page’ series asks established poets to read from memory and has featured some real stars. I got talking to one of the booksellers in the Notting Hill Daunt Books the other day, who asked if I had heard of TLM and whether I was going to the launch of their next issue. It’s great to be in the know. Their short fiction is invariably top-notch, too.

https://thelondonmagazine.org

Album: Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain (2022)

File this one under ‘Dark Americana’. I was sceptical when it first came out, mostly because people I knew were so into it and I wanted to be different. When I gave in, I discovered emotions I didn’t know you could feel. I remember having to stop on the footbridge over Canonbury station to give my heart the space to yearn the way the song demanded. In my memory that song was ‘Sun Bleached Flies’, but it could just as easily have been ‘Ptolomea’, ‘Western Nights’ or ‘A House in Nebraska’. Now I return to the album whenever I need it. Usually when I’ve been rushing too much and haven’t stopped on a bridge for a while.

https://open.spotify.com/album/3WmujGwOS0ANHkJRnMH6n8

Favourite WritersMosaic writer 

Bernardine Evaristo – her novels are obviously incredible, but so many of my favourite poets have also come through The Complete Works initiative, which she founded. British poetry is much richer for her efforts.

Magnus McDowall

Magnus McDowall is a poet from London and a postgraduate student on the Creative Writing MSt at the University of Oxford.