Category Language
Mere Words
Forced to witness and live, day after day, this nation’s fraught and inept and demented progress towards Brexit – the unforgiveable false step, waste and wanton irrelevance of it, the tedium, obsessive delinquency, delusion, shame, the sheer disgraceful wrong and disaster of it – I retreat into words, not just for some slight relief, but… Continue reading Mere Words
Poems in Public
Poetry once belonged only in open space – the mead hall by a great fire, where flea-bitten warriors sat at table with their lord ; or a place of worship or ceremony, the wedding, the funeral. Not in private, on paper, let alone on screen. Poetry belonged in the air between people, out loud… Continue reading Poems in Public
I Came Running
When Theresa May, the UK’s Conservative Prime Minister, called an election for June 2017, her manifesto included an opportunity to repeal New Labour’s ban on fox hunting. The Conservatives had expected to increase their majority, which would have eased May’s ability to push through Brexit. Instead… Continue reading I Came Running
Dust
The poem I’m publishing here foresees the end of the world. The false god Me n’ Mine has too many worshippers to be withstood. Besides Greed, the angel which serves Me n’ Mine most faithfully is the Lie and it is the Lie by which the false god rules and will destroy us all… Continue reading Dust
Poet on the Cliff
Let’s look again at St Aldhelm’s chapel, a small square Norman building on a cliff-edge. It stands at the very tip of a promontory on the Dorset coast called – a bit confusingly – St Alban’s Head.
The chapel is… Continue reading Poet on the Cliff
Poet on the Team
Earlier this year there was a General Election in the UK. Beforehand, Theresa May had insisted she wouldn’t call one, but apparently changed her mind whilst out walking in the hills. Perhaps she saw a fox and got over-excited. For, as we all know, the election didn’t go well for her. The fox escaped and… Continue reading Poet on the Team
Lying to the People is a High Crime
All Westminster MP’s are required to swear to tell the truth. I have been told this on the good authority of my own MP. She told me that new MP’s must swear to abide by the seven Nolan principles. The sixth of these states that holders of public office should be truthful.
But the Nolan… Continue reading Lying to the People is a High Crime
Rafts in the Flood
The lords of misrule continue to flood our minds and lives with their disgraceful doings. But I can speak here of two small developments which, for me at least, are cheering and act in a way as rafts.
One concerns a new website, designed by Joseph Wolf : https://poemsforthewall.org
Here is… Continue reading Rafts in the Flood