Candace Bahouth
Miranda Gold interviews artist Candace Bahouth, talking needlepoint, tapestry, portraiture, mosaic and more. Originally published by Cheerio Publishing, July 2024.
‘I keep moving,’ Candace Bahouth tells me, ‘I continue.’ Though now settled in Somerset, her artistic exploration has been ceaseless, infusing her work across forms with a highly dynamic energy. Born to a Lebanese-Palestinian father and an Italian mother, she grew up in the US, studying Fine Art at Syracuse University before England ‘seduced’ her; a rich alchemy of geography and heritage, mirroring the diversity of her oeuvre.
Liberating the truest music
Miranda Gold reviews Escritos Famencos by Federico García Lorca, edited by Carlos García Simón. Originally published in the TLS, April 2024.
“Flamenco is the towering creation of our people”, Federico García Lorca wrote to the music critic and composer Adolfo Salazar in 1921. It was a pivotal moment for Lorca – he was entering into a passionate engagement with the music, which would be integral to the evolution of both his artistic process and his sense of identity.
STORM OPHELIA
A story by Miranda Gold published in The London Magazine, December 2023/ January 2024.
That day when the red sun took the light out of the city and caught it in a restless sleep. Even Fran’s voice matched the drift and twitch of somnambulist Londoners, appearing and vanishing through a milky florescence usually the preserve of a seaside town out of season.
BEYOND BINARIES
An essay in response to the Israel-Hamas War and the humanitarian crisis, 2nd December 2023
The ‘task’ of the Holocaust has come back into the foreground with blistering clarity since the October 7th attacks – and if the foundation of this task is to honour the pledge ‘never again’, surely this pledge must be extended to all humanity.
WrestLing with Shadows
Two rivers run in the home of the shades, Mnemosyne and Lethe; drinking from the former assures recollection, drinking from the latter promises oblivion.
Extract | A Small Dark Quiet
Read the first chapter from Miranda Gold’s second novel, A Small Dark Quiet, an extract published in The Best Peace Fiction Anthology by The University of New Mexico Press.
turtle at low tide
Freddie’s father was fifty when he informed what remained of the family that his number was up, that he was on his way out. It was the closest the man had come to completing a sentence in over a decade.
MY LONDON
My map of London stubbornly resists sensible navigation; temporally as much as spatially its tracks crisscross timeframes and boroughs – closer to the logic of a dreamscape than an ordinance survey.
LEFT PENDING
Yellow ringed, disinterested, but the illusion of eye contact was convincing enough. We were a week into London’s variation on the theme of lockdown by the time I’d realised the blackbirds had gone.
Reading as Alchemy
A failsafe cocktail of vodka and poetry got me through the damp October I spent at UEA. Student essentials: one to trick me on to the makeshift dance floor, the other pulling back the curtains, hauling me into the day.
Just Passing
Alf’s train was due in just before six. Caroline’s last message to him was a list of identifying clues: red scarf, black beany… Nothing back.
chrysalis
Molly’s grandmother, Hazel, was congealed to the worn brown velvet armchair in the front room on Sunday evenings.