Front Row

Alice Walker is famous for prose books such as The Color Purple and In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. But her first book was a collection of poems and she has published eight more. Alice talks about her latest, Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart, which ranges from poems of rage about injustice, poems of praise to great figures - BB King for instance - and celebration of the ordinary like making frittatas. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is known for her pumpkin installations and her obsession with polka dots. A new documentary charts her career beginning in New York in the 1950s during the Pop Art movement, where she became well known for her provocative immersive exhibitions and performances. It covers her return to Japan in middle-age, checking herself into a psychiatric hospital and fading from public view, to her current status as the world’s bestselling living female artist. The film-maker Heather Lenz tells us about her documentary. Alongside the film, a new show of Yayoi Kusama’s recent work opens this we