Shows
Front RowMarina Abramović on her dream creation - Balkan Erotic EpicArtist Marina Abramović on the world premiere of her largest-scale performance artwork - Balkan Erotic Epic - at Aviva Studios in Manchester. BBC Culture reporter Noor Nanji on the Riyadh Comedy Festival which has divided the comedy world.Poets Max Wallis and Dr Anna Percy on poetry and mental health as their new poetry magazine, The Aftershock Review, makes an impressive debut.Clare Wood, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the British Ceramics Biennial on the festival's new international selection of artists' films centred on clay.Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene A...
2025-10-0742 min
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)The C Word Diaries by Dr Anna PercyEditorial Note by Max WallisIn The C Word Diaries, Dr Anna Percy’s second poem in Issue One, we are thrown back into the beginnings of the pandemic, and the unknown tension of a world we were about to lose. It is mid March 2020, days before 23 March when lockdown is announced. The poem keeps close to what that week felt like at street level. Parcels on doorsteps. Empty shelves. Quarantine rules forming in real time. The hunger for touch that keeps turning into risk. Humour and horror in the same breath. An ordinary flat becomes a st...
2025-09-0403 min
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)Xanthous Motifs by Dr Anna PercyEditorial Note by Max WallisThis week I’m proud to share a poem by my co-editor/contributing-editor, Dr Anna Percy. Anna has developed what she calls “Mad Informed Punctuation”: a system where [] marks a short breath and [ ] a longer one, mapping lived experience of bipolar disorder and survival directly onto the page.In Xanthous Motifs [24th August 2023], form and content are inseparable. The poem veers between grief, sex, memory, and absurd beauty: jars of mustard smashed in a kitchen, a marigold paisley plate, a fur coat of mercury. The breath marks fracture the flow, refusi...
2025-09-0301 min
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)Day 72 - The Daily Aftershock - The Kissing Gate with Dr Anna PercyIt's Dr Anna Percy here with a prompt for the Daily Aftershock. I'm asking you to try and find a very large piece of paper which might for you mean A4 but if you have a large drawing pad preferably unlined, that would be a good piece of paper, or stick two pieces of paper together for this prompt.So I want you to think about a kissing gate, which is a kind of gate that exists in the countryside, usually to stop animals like sheep and cows from getting from one field to another but because...
2025-06-2601 min
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)Day 49 - Write a Self CentoIt’s Dr. Anna Percy here with Day 49 of the Daily Aftershock and a brand new prompt for you.You may have heard of the form cento in poetry. Traditionally, you borrow a line from a different poet for each line. But today, I’d like you to make a self cento, a cento made entirely from your own words.Use your own poetry, notebooks, text messages, Facebook statuses, Instagram captions, even a bit of a shopping list. The more unexpected and creative the source material, the more interesting the result.
2025-06-0301 min
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)Day 46 - Write an ekphrastic poem from a song (Dr Anna Percy)The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.It’s Dr Anna Percy here with your prompt for Day 46 of the Daily Aftershock. You may have heard of an ekphrastic poem, a poem written in response to a work of art. The most famous example is John Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn. But ekphrasis isn’t limited to visual art, it can respond to any art form. Today, I encourage you to free write to a s...
2025-05-3101 min
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)Day 43 – A Disappeared Object, with Dr Anna PercyDaily Aftershock #43 – A Disappeared Objectwith Dr Anna PercyIt’s Dr Anna Percy and I’m here with another prompt.I’d like you to think about an item, a product, or a piece of equipment that you used to use all the time, or that you saw someone else use all the time, but that no longer exists, or you can’t get it where you live.It might be something like what I was thinking about: the brand Spectacular nail polishes I used to have on my shelf as a young gi...
2025-05-2801 min