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
Category coronavirus
In Search of Good Faith
What does Great Britain Stand for, these Days ?
What do we Brits stand for, these days, now that we have “taken back control” ?
Judging by our government’s grossly inadequate management of Corvid-19 – we stand for incompetence, incoherence and dishonesty.
Judging by Mr Johnson’s recent conduct over the Brexit negotiations – we are represented by the fatuous and delusional bravado of a juvenile hoodlum ; and again… continue reading
Gaffe Man Spans the Globe
Congratulations to Jacinda Ardern for winning her landslide victory in New Zealand’s recent general election. And for her earlier, highly competent management of the Covid-19 virus there, in such dramatic contrast to Mr Johnson’s pathetic and disastrous flounderings here in the UK, half a world away (“alas, alas”). Here is the message our hopeless Mr (“call me Boris”) Johnson sent… continue reading
My Way to You
I keep coming upon this poem in its folder, its digital “archive,” and it’s as if I’ve tripped up on it. It somehow sticks out, sitting meekly under “M” in its alphabetical order. But where really does it belong ? I never quite know what to make of it and yet I think it is possibly a poem I would… continue reading
Homecoming
The “home” I was thinking of when I wrote this poem is a particular landscape I happen still to love, not only because, in its own way, it is beautiful, but because I associate it with a seminal time in my life, a time of growth, of emergence, of true beginning. And at that time, it already seemed to… continue reading
Wild Honey UK 2020
This poem above is actually a very loose translation of “Wild Honey” by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.
The slightly altered title here is an acknowledgement of just how loose the translation is. The poem’s original was written (I think) in 1933. Stalin had been in power for around a decade and his purges were beginning.
I do not… continue reading
The Gaze Blank and Pitiless
WB Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” was written almost exactly a century ago, but if it’s possible for a poem to become truer still with age, then surely this one does.
And yet…Yeats wrote his poem in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence (he was Irish). The poem… continue reading
Counting
This poem seems to follow on a bit from the previous one uploaded here. But whereas I wrote “I Insist my Ribs…” over three years ago, “Counting” has been written in the last few days.
I have a vague idea of what was in my mind as I wrote this latest poem. And looking at it now, I’m increasingly seeing… continue reading
I Insist my Ribs Contain Stars
I like the idea of mayhem in the crematorium…… continue reading