Mailing List


Kaleem Hawa

Kaleem Hawa has written about art, film, and literature for the New York Review of Books, The Nation, and Artforum, among others.



Articles Available Online


Hating it Lush: On Tel Aviv

Essay

May 2023

Kaleem Hawa

Essay

May 2023

I   They made the desert bloom, tall sparkling towers and clean Bauhaus lines, and apple-ring acacias, and teal blue shuttle buses, and stock...

Poetry

Issue No. 28

Three poems from issue 28

Sarah Barnsley

Valzhyna Mort

Kaleem Hawa

Poetry

Issue No. 28

Valzhyna Mort, ‘Music for Girl’s Voice and Bison’   Sarah Barnsley, ‘Virginia Woolf Has Fallen Over’   Kaleem Hawa,...

October 12, 1976, Soho, London Andy stood in the alley outside the Prince of Wales He felt in the pocket of his leather jacket and found most of a sheet of orange sunshine Andy couldn’t remember putting it there He couldn’t remember how he got to the cinema from the squat in Stoke Newington But he knew that it was morning, that he was in a crowd of people, some heavy, heavy people, some lightweights, old freaks, young punks, odd straights, and that Fantasia was about to start inside Andy balled the blotter in his hand and quickly stuffed it in his mouth He gagged but kept chewing until it was gone He turned and gestured to a wrinkly geezer wearing a tartan scarf but no shirt who was seated on a blackened sheet of cardboard in front of the fire exit The man held up a can of bitter Andy bolted a swig and handed it back ‘Ta very much’, said one, ‘Nae bother’, said the other A short time later Andy was sat in the dark amid zoo noises, crying and slurping, and that is when the lights began   April 13, 1972, Blackpool Andy opened the front door and dropped two plastic bags at the foot of the stairs: one with his schoolwork, the other with his PE kit in He went into the kitchen, turned off the radio, took a bowl from the draining board, opened a cupboard door and took out a packet of Weetabix Andy put two biscuits into the bowl, hesitated, and took one out, placing it back in the packet He opened the fridge, which was empty except for a withered scallion and a dried piece of cheese Andy returned the remaining Weetabix biscuit to the packet, folded it neatly down and put it back in the cupboard He washed the bowl and placed it on the draining board Andy went into the living room, sat down and stared into the empty fireplace   January 5, 1990, Liverpool Andy kneeled on the wooden floor, naked and sobbing, snot roping out of his nose and down

Contributor

November 2019

Kaleem Hawa

Contributor

November 2019

Kaleem Hawa has written about art, film, and literature for the New York Review of Books, The Nation, and...

after Mahmoud Darwish    Why is a boy an exclamation,  and why are his dead a period?,  why do his sinews tighten when he sees  a Palestinian body? Does his vision narrow  because of their flight,  or because their world is raining with salt?  Why is a boy with a gun different  from a boy with a jail cell?,  if the tools of rupture are our arms for  repurposing the body, and the arms of  the state are our means of repurposing the male,  are we finally useful and breathing and nervous…?  Does the white mean Night’s arrival?,  or does night signal the white’s escape?,  and when that white city boy becomes  a White City man,  does the hate in his heart subside?,  or does it become an ellipses,  a Bauhaus history of stories started  and left unfinished 
You Arrive at A White Checkpoint and Emerge Unscathed

Prize Entry

November 2019

Kaleem Hawa


READ NEXT

feature

Issue No. 20

From a Cuban Notebook

J. S. Tennant

feature

Issue No. 20

Beneath the rain, beneath the smell, beneath all that is a reality a people makes and unmakes itself leaving...

poetry

Issue No. 8

The Cloud of Knowing

John Ashbery

poetry

Issue No. 8

There are those who would have paid that. The amount your eyes bonded with (O spangled home) will have...

Art

November 2012

Pending performance: Cally Spooner’s live production

Isabella Maidment

Art

November 2012

It’s 1957 and the press release still isn’t written[1] An actress dressed in black overalls stands on a theatrically...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required