In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: politics

  • Facing West over a Small Field

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    Here is a link to a poem about the poet D.J. Enright and his French wife, the artist Madeleine Enright. (See one of her pictures, above). They belonged in worlds quite foreign to me, but in the last few months of their lives, I chanced to be their next-door neighbour. I had moved into a…

  • Anthem for a Lying Toad

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    The UK’s Brexit government have been showing us their true mettle in recent weeks. Following their disastrous response to the Covid-19 virus, they are itching to move on to enterprises more to their liking, but equally vulnerable to their incompetence. It has been said that “The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters” (it’s the title…

  • Steps

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  • Gathering Fruit

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  • I Send Greetings from this Place

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      The place I’m thinking of this evening is called St Aldhelm’s Chapel, pictured above. It is a small and simple Norman structure built right on the edge of a Dorset cliff, facing out over the English Channel and beyond that to Europe. The chapel has no electricity and the interior is dark. It has…

  • The Widow

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      Here is another poem of loss and it’s called “The Widow” (the title links to it). I wrote it some years ago, in sorrow for the grief of the person concerned, but also in awe at how she voiced her bereavement, the words she reached for, and the way she flung them out, time…

  • A White Shirt Writ Large in the Rose Garden

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    Dear MP’s Office Manager, Thank you for your earlier response and yes, please, I would like to hear the Cabinet Office’s response to your news, that by the 26th May you had already received 1500 emails concerning Mr Cummings. I need to report that the responses I’ve heard so far have just left me brimming…

  • The Lying Toad is Back, the Tousled Look, the Winning Smirk, Our Leader…

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    The prose piece that follows begins with the mismatch in the UK, between the present Prime Minister’s relative popularity on the one hand, and his long established disregard for the Nolan Principles of ethical conduct on the other. The piece provides a reminder that our Prime Minister has previously been sacked twice for lying  and…