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Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

The mothers check their belongings into lockers and pass through metal detectors They learn the rules of the public gallery and the name of each judge After court adjourns for the day, they walk to the supermarket wearing winter coats over their saris, boots sinking into the snow Some remove their gloves to catch snowflakes, licking their palms to see if it’s true, it’s just water, while others concentrate on their wheelchairs and canes    Under fluorescent lights, the mothers compare different brands of biscuits and squeeze loose tomatoes and onions    One mother is the first to return to the island She is disappointed with the straight-backed chairs, the ‘No food or drink!’ signs and the realisation that the trial is concerned with crimes and humanity, while she herself is consumed by the absence of a single person who was born on the second day of Navaratri His name had to begin with an ‘a’ or ‘aa’, which is why she named him Ahilan    Ahilan Sivapragasam, Pranavan Muthukumar, Keerthana Ravichandran   The mothers have written these names on forms submitted at every administrative level The names are now in a public database, and the list has been filed with the court as evidence    In the gallery, the mothers sit next to diligent undergraduates and doctoral candidates who lean back, unimpressed Many of these students will write research papers about enforced disappearance as defined in the Rome Statute They will use ‘disappear’ as listed in the dictionary (verb, used without object) but, on the island, people are objects who receive the action: they do not disappear, they are disappeared   In the gallery, the mothers sit alongside journalists who write for syndicates, magazines and news outlets, including those from the island One journalist watches the mothers closely and, even when they seem bored and distracted, she writes about their resilience Another is a staunch supporter of the defendant He writes headlines like ‘Crocodile Tears in Kangaroo Court’ for which his editor commissions a cartoon of the mothers as sly reptiles, their eyes peering over the waterline as the defendant dangles at the end of

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

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Prize Entry

April 2016

Role Play

Naomi Frisby

Prize Entry

April 2016

Your right hand is the first to go. One Sunday afternoon as you’re sitting on the sofa reading the...

poetry

Issue No. 18

Two New Poems

Dorothea Lasky

poetry

Issue No. 18

Do You Want To Dip The Rat   Do you want to dip the rat Completely in oil  ...

Art

September 2011

Interview with Cornelia Parker

Lowenna Waters

Art

September 2011

Cornelia Parker has over the past twenty years carved out a reputation as one of Britain’s most respected sculptors...

 

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