In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Month: July 2019

  • The Parrot Studies the Human Brain

    Posted:

    This stanza was written just minutes before it was announced that Mr B. Johnson, sacked twice in the past for being a liar, had just become Prime Minister of the UK. He had been elected to that position, not by the country, but by members of the Tory Party, some of whom had only just…

  • The Parrot Keeps Asking

    Posted:

    On the day this piece was written the nation was waiting to find out which of the two rival (Tory) candidates was about to take control of our nation, Hunt or Johnson. Both were hollow men, diddy men. Johnson was widely expected to get it, so no great surprise was expressed when he did. In…

  • Judgement from Paradise

    Posted:

    I don’t think there was any immediate catalyst for this stanza, as far as date or event were concerned. In the UK, as elsewhere, there just seemed to be so few redeeming features, no 5th cavalry rescue , no clearing of the mist, no light of sanity breaking through. The thought that we make a…

  • The Caged Parrot Watches the Demons Dance

    Posted:

    This piece returns to a preoccupation of my own, concerning language. What is the point of writing, the point of taking a  position and then articulating it ? And of course that leads to the question, why keep writing these stanzas, these mere words amid all the bizarre and frantic and disastrous political action going…

  • A Poem Exhibition in Clifton Cathedral

    Posted:

    About three months ago, I organised an exhibition of poem-posters in Clifton Cathedral. This is a bold and wonderful Roman Catholic building in Bristol, designed and built in the 1960’s and 70’s. The exhibition took place on a balcony there, built above the font and overlooking the altar. As soon as I am able, I…

  • Parrot on the Labour Die-Hards

    Posted:

    Self-evidently, these are times of national crisis from which only the best of governments can rescue us. We do not have the best of governments and one still worse is coming. So it matters that Tom Watson cuts a rather lone figure in the Labour Party just now. What he stands for, I believe, is…

  • The Parrot Glimpses Mr Toad

    Posted:

    It continues to look certain that our new Prime Minister will be a toad. In saying that, I am thinking partly of Mr Toad of “Wind in the Willows.” I am also mindful that the UK ambassador in Washington, Mr Kim Darroch, has just resigned, due to being betrayed by some colleague, and to the…

  • The Parrot Goes to Glastonbury

    Posted:

    The 2019 Glastonbury music festival is now behind us. The parrot attended, at least in spirit. Then he came home and read this article in The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/…/brexit-jeremy-corbyn-len-mc… It suggests that, out here in the present-day world, what goes on in dear old Len Mcluskey”s tent/castle/head-harbour-of-the-past seemed to be having an immoderate affect upon Corbyn’s…