by Kate Birch | Mar 7, 2026 | News, Picks of the Month
succinct, modest, affecting portrait of a good but constrained life It takes great skill to make the ordinary extraordinary and the well observed and considered ‘At the Barbers’ by Stephen Chappell has done just that. It is for this reason and many more...
by Kate Birch | Mar 1, 2026 | News
Zebra Print Gridlines project across my body as I become part of a painting made to scale. I bloom with tipsy sunflowers, so bright that I forget their maker was morose. In the gallery, the walls swirl in detail, The artist’s large orange sun pans a...
by Kate Birch | Feb 1, 2026 | News, Picks of the Month
A very striking and thought provoking piece of work. An evocative poem, powerful, visceral; a poem striking in its metaphors and nuances, with a strong sense of place – Plymouth and its Barbican area – and both past and present. (Two days after the poem was submitted...
by Kate Birch | Jan 19, 2026 | News, Picks of the Month
I love the whimsical way this develops like a slowly falling snowflake Snow may sometimes be an inconvenience and a bore, as many will have experienced this winter but it is also playful, wondrous and beautiful. And all too much in danger of disappearing. It is for...
by Kate Birch | Dec 25, 2025 | News
There is no Christmas without peace and yet war and genocide continue and these are ignored or even supported by the so-called ‘developed’ world, by the global north and beyond. The powers that be in Israel and its army continue to decimate Gaza and make...
by Kate Birch | Dec 8, 2025 | News, Picks of the Month
I have lived this. I believe every woman from Iran who reads her words will feel every line of the poems she writes. Two powerful sentences that show why Mariam Saidan’s ‘A Cry’ is the IS&T Pick of the Month for November 2025. This is a...
