No Light / Might Escape

Hull in the UK is an old industrialised fishing town ('city', actually, but it always modestly describes itself as a town in the same way as its ships are always 'boats').It has been a place without hope for so long - even for those working all hours against impossibly dangerous odds - that it has become somewhere which tolerates what would be considered as a failed life anywhere else.It must be fast becoming one of the most extraordinarily artistic places in Britain, nurturing well over fifty published writers, poets, playwrights and other beer-swilling ne'er-do-wells who are insistently encouraged and supported by Cilla Wykes of ThisisUll and John Godber of Hull Truck.Joe Hakim's 'No Light Might Escape' - a reference to the essence of a black hole - shows exactly why. Nobody tells you in school that poetry can be funny, but Joe's writing is hilarious, a genuine jig on the end of life's rope. The stories and the verse merge to give an intense account of one life lived largely in the dark, where every chink of light is either sunshine or the flash of some random disinterested sniper's bullet.Absolutely gripping. Treat yourself. Out of great hardship great art mostly emerges. Light does escape. Here is the proof.