In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: NHS

  • Poetry in Public Space

    Posted:

    I’ve been running this project for years now. Demand for its material has come from schools, healthcare settings and libraries all over the world. Since Covid, however, that demand has effectively evaporated. For a while, of course, public space changed its nature. It became dangerous and, as a precaution, places like waiting rooms, class rooms…

  • Across the Way

    Posted:

    “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…

  • Parrot Addenda

    Posted:

    Since the Summer of 2018, I have been writing a series of stanzas in rhyme royal, mostly on the subject of Brexit. Each has been written as a separate item, rather than as part of a longer poem. They were produced in response to, and often very soon after, various events and announcements that occurred…

  • Jes in Yearnland

    Posted:

    Everything about the UK’s Brexit Agon smells of rot. For a start, the whole EU issue is fundamentally irrelevant and absurd, compared to the many truly urgent concerns that need our immediate, whole and best attention. We face real ills and they harm and threaten us. The EU is not, and never was, the cause…

  • The 70th Birthday

    Posted:

    I posted this poem up on Facebook on July 3rd. Two weeks later, it had received 1,146 “Likes” and “Loves” and had been “shared” 5,210 times. The poem is by Michael Rosen and, in turn, he shared it on his own Facebook timeline and that separate posting was further shared many times. Michael was originally…

  • Re-uniting the United Kingdom

    Posted:

    My partner has begun to dread the subject of Cameron. Cameron fills our heads and house far too often. What if, after all, Cameron retains power this Thursday, or sometime thereafter ? Another five years of this, she wonders ? But what if Cameron doesn’t ? What then ? Where will all this anxiety and…

  • What’s a “Carer” ?

    Posted:

    Each of us surely wants to be acknowledged as a “caring” person, even while so much that is uncaring is happening all round us – perpetrated presumably by aliens. The Head Rude-boy of Blingland has presided over changes in the Benefit system that disgrace us all, even while they continue sufficiently popular with his constituency…

  • Truth or Lie – which to vote for in May ?

    Posted:

    For me, one of the best news items in recent days has been Peter Oborne’s resignation from The Telegraph on a point of principle. I hadn’t even heard his name before, but suddenly here he is, more prominent and sharply focused than almost anything else in the parade of parrot heads and slogans we are…