Poetry & prose by Alex Hickman
Child workers – Lodz Ghetto, 1940s There were several photos of Jewish and Roma children put to work by the Nazi authorities. Children pressing sheets of metal and concentrating while they sorted slivers of silicate. These children worked to earn a daily food allowance. As the war advanced the work continued but the daily allowance […]
Read More…In our garden there is a row of eight apple trees. Seven are bramleys and in the middle of the row grows a taller pollinator which produces sweet, smaller red-yellow apples; I don’t know their name. Last week an expert pruner called Tony gave each of our trees a serious haircut. Their new winter silhouettes are […]
Read More…Yesterday we walked the High Line, a prettified length of elevated railway track that runs between the Meatpacking and Chelsea districts of West Manhattan. It offers a playful experience: stands of silver birch, wooden sun loungers that run for a little while on the rails of the old track, a lawn raised on a bed of […]
Read More…Impressions of America: the flimsiness of clapboard houses, the loneliness of farms, goose-cropped grassland and bogged woodland; bays, Prussian-blue and shallow with the sea somewhere in the distance; rows of terraced housing being razed, or good to go. Not a man or woman in sight. Cars – big, bright, shining in winter sunshine, keeping pace, parked […]
Read More…The general is summoned to the UN to be briefed for his mission – he arrives a day early and with time to kill and minded to recce he joins a tour – old habits etc – in the foyer a photographic exhibition of life in a Warsaw ghetto, pictures of child workers the ages […]
Read More…The high tan hall, the quiet, 600 people so close together, sitting in long columns, the ceiling high above them like heaven, they sitting tight to the floor, the hats and coats hung in a locker room – a human touch and child-like, the water fountain and the sparse amenities, the tall man with the […]
Read More…I arrived in New York yesterday. As I queued at passport control I watched Nick Burns, Harvard Professor and once America’s top diplomat commenting on the outlook for Egypt (“difficult”) and Syria (‘grim’). New York, scene of Sunday’s rumpus in the UN Security Council, when the Chinese and Russians vetoed a tepid resolution condemning Syria, […]
Read More…Last October I looked forward to a cold winter, and the promise of snow. In fact the winter has been warm. There has been little drama and – until now – none of the hard weather we experienced in 2010/11. It arrived today; just in time for us to walk through the village and enjoy […]
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STUFF HAPPENS 