Category: Poetry
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Words for an Earthquake
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The United Kingdom has left the EU. We have vacated our seat at the high table and it is laid now for just 27 places. We’ve “got it done.” Or “gone and done it.” In recognition of the significance of this momentous step we’ve taken, whatever it may mean, I am uploading here a selection…
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What does Great Britain Stand for, these Days ?
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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…
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My Way to You
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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…
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Homecoming
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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…
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Wild Honey UK 2020
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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…
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Who’s Human ?
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The quote towards the end of this new poem is from “Requiem” by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, translated by A.S. Kline, 2005. She was writing of the Stalinist purges. Her poem of witness was not published until decades later, in her old age.… continue reading