It’s often difficult to understand why, at some point, certain behaviours or opinions or political policies become acceptable, even popular, which were not acceptable or popular before ; why certain approaches or qualities of presentation start to be given value, where before they had no appeal.
And caught up as we are in a world transforming faster and faster, it… continue reading
The Potent Appeal of the “Strong Model”
In Search of Good Faith
I have been carrying a little string of thoughts in my head for several weeks. They make a point I haven’t seen being made elsewhere and which might be worth adding to the mix. Maybe it would be of interest to someone passing, even throw some further light, however dim and peripheral, on what’s happening around us, or at least… continue reading
What Are Words For ?
So how are we to use this astonishing power we have ? This ability to shape the air into sounds of meaning which then we can share – is it purely and only a survival tool, a way to influence, or sell a line ? Are words just hooks to fish with ? And on from that, does communicating through… continue reading
The Death of an Old Man
Yesterday, a grand and often very beautiful funeral was held, following the death of a likeable, shrewd and vivid man.
It is of course hard to separate the image we are given of Prince Philip, or ourselves put onto him, from the man he actually was.
He surely had a similar problem, himself. Who was he, apart from his public… continue reading
How to Speak in Times of Clamour
A long time ago, I went away to Greece and spent three months there alone in a hut, facing the rock pictured above. By now, I had lived a youth and much of an adulthood and this was a time for reflection, in case I could make some sense of all that living, never to be repeated or recaptured, all… continue reading
Where You Live
This poem was finished on the day of Joe Biden’s Inauguration, January 20th 2021. It does not have the glitter and panache of Amanda Gorman’s poem recited on that day, but I think it carries a great deal of the relief so many of us will have felt on receiving Biden’s clear signals that sense, sanity and integrity were back… continue reading
So where have we got to, so far, in 2021 ?
So where have we got to, so far, in the year 2021 ? Locked in, locked down, sundered from outer family – again. And everywhere, the virus and its effects, spreading yet further, pressing wider and deeper. The masked face, still – and ever increasingly – the image of our time. In the US, a few days ago, that enormous… continue reading
A Severed Edge
In the rush and flood of falsity and ill-doing that enter and surround our everyday lives, among all the mis-steps and momentous errors born of that rush and that falsity, I keep returning to certain physical landmarks that at least give the appearance of standing firm and of meaning something worth standing for.
One such landmark is St Aldhelm’s chapel.… continue reading
Across the Way
“The Reader” is a national charity.
“From its global Shared Reading movement, to its Calderstones Park home in Liverpool… “The Reader” builds lively communities that bring people together and books to life.” And my project “Poems for…the wall” and “The Reader” are exploring ways we might collaborate a bit.
In the meantime, one of “The Reader’s many projects is to… continue reading