In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: General

  • Word Play

    Posted:

      May words work. May mine look you in the eye and having found you out work on you right there. Fraud and felon play with words, seeking only to deceive and buy and bend you to their will. I must work a cleaner way my words releasing you to where you belong. Words must…

  • Fable 14 – Rome Burning

    Posted:

    This short piece offers a kind of action-guide for times of crisis and confusion. Here is a link to it. It proposes a system for prioritising what to do, when it seems that there are always several things that need to be done at once, and they are all clamouring for your attention. For instance,…

  • Where in the World does Poetry Belong ?

    Posted:

    I run a project called “Poems for…” It  offers poem-posters free of charge for public display. Many of the poems are bilingual, with over fifty different languages represented so far. The poems go to schools and libraries and healthcare waiting rooms across the UK and in fact all over the world. Here below is a…

  • The Cleaning of Our Streets

    Posted:

    I have just signed the Hacked Off Declaration of Support for the Royal Charter for Press Self-Regulation. All three political parties are committed to this interpretation of Leveson’s recommendations. The rival version is known as “Ipso” and is favoured by most of the Press, all of whose previous systems of self-regulation have been a hollow…

  • Fable 13 – Jason’s Sermon from a Ledge

    Posted:

    This short piece examines the topic of ever-accelerating change which we as a race have brought upon ourselves with our science and ingenuity, creating whole new worlds in ever quicker succession. It questions whether this acceleration we have released is manageable, even survivable. A character called Jason is the speaker. He has appeared in some…

  • Dawn by Lampshade

    Posted:

    It’s good to be up in the mornings just before the sky begins to turn. It’s a bit like a huge lampshade, stretched very tight all round. The lamp-switch is one of those fade-on fade-off ones, and the bulb has come on very dim and lovely, no obvious colour yet, no reds or greens, still…

  • Thank God for the Bishops

    Posted:

    I am writing this piece soon after Vincent Nichols declared that the UK Government’s changes to the benefit system are “punitive” and a “disgrace.” Two strong words quietly spoken by a man about to be appointed Cardinal by the Pope.  Since then, twenty-seven Anglican bishops and sixteen other clergy have followed suit, accusing the Tory-led…

  • The Raging Hawk

    Posted:

    I run a creative writing workshop each fortnight in a psychiatric in-patient unit in Brent and always cycle there and back. One part of the route runs alongside the Grand Union canal, another part the Thames between Hammersmith and Wandsworth. On my way home one evening, just below Hammersmith Bridge, still in day-light, tide very…