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Nicole Flattery

Nicole Flattery's criticism has appeared in the GuardianThe Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good Time was published in 2019. Her favourite Chantal Akeman film is News From Home.



Articles Available Online


Chantal Akerman’s ‘My Mother Laughs’

Book Review

October 2019

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

October 2019

There’s a scene in the documentary I Don’t Belong Anywhere, about the Belgian filmmaker’s Chantal Akerman’s life and work, where she discusses her only...

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore's ‘See What Can Be Done’

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore writes in her introduction to See What Can Be Done that, at the start of her career,...

INTERROGATION (1)     Are you a witch?   Are you   Have you had relations with the devil?   Have you   Have you had relations with the devil and what took place?   I kissed him under the tail, it was a bit like soil, a bit like road tar when it heats up, he was flickering in pleasure, the field would be just the same when I tongue that, the bird’s feathers parting   What knowledge did the devil give you?   I built a house next to the sea, the roof is red/orange, the sky is a shaking plate of light peeling you back, there is grass out the front, some metal bins, you can see a lighthouse I began to sleep with the windows open, I began to creep along the bed to my own globe face in the mirror Sitting rubbed up in myself is this fierce fire, it does not come from me, even the stones in the drive are crackling with it   What did the devil make you do under his control?   His mother had just died We ate mint ice cream by the coffin, he was missing her, my sock was loose, we kept laughing   What is magic?   Picture an egg yolk, that huge yellow throw up sun Dementedly shining, falling out of itself, birthed and reverent   What is magic?    Little cracks coming in, small flaws in the glass, and the air slapping itself, you stand on a hill, things are mainly green and breakable, you think ok I’m not alone, but mainly, ok I was never alone, on a far off hill the earth is breaking up against the gas pressure of the sun, if there was ever anything to miss this is what you miss, how it’s beginning   What crimes have you enacted?   Love makes me forget myself sometimes I am horribly angry, I am sick with it, my vomit turns black, but this love I can’t explain it, beyond that it is exactly   What other witches/sorcerers have you conjured with?   S couldn’t eat The food was poor and cheap but not that She had these violet eyes   Have you taken black mass?   I’ve wondered why things turn Rustling and fluttering cells, the nib of the chest where what you might call soul slides out and enters a hyena fucking happily amongst the fruit rinds   What did the devil

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery’s criticism has appeared in the Guardian, The Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good...

Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘Her Body and Other Parties’

Book Review

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

January 2018

I’m reluctant to admit this but it’s often easier for me to write about a book I hated rather than a book I loved....

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poetry

October 2013

Steam

Jon Stone

poetry

October 2013

Steam in the changing rooms, stripping off after the race, breathes like an engine. The air is filled up...

feature

June 2014

Hoarseness: A Legend of Contemporary Cairo

Youssef Rakha

feature

June 2014

U. Mubarak It kind of grows out of traffic. The staccato hiss of an exhaust pipe begins to sound like...

feature

October 2013

A World of Sharp Edges: A Week Among Poets in the Western Cape

André Naffis-Sahely

feature

October 2013

In Antal Szerb’s The Incurable, the eccentric millionaire Peter Rarely steps into the dining car of a train steaming...

 

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