In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: The use of Language

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

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    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…

  • Let the bird of paradise speak loud from his cage

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    I want to recite to camera a long poem, originally by John Skelton. And I want to do so from the top of the Tyndale Monument, a tall tower on a hill near Bristol.  William Tyndale and Skelton both lived in the reign of Henry VIIIth but they have more than that in common. The…

  • I See Everywhere the False

    Posted:

      I see everywhere the false, the masked, the sleek and hollow, the bought and the creatured.   Their words twist the wind tug at my mind and steal from me the hymns of my life the sacred.   True words die the moment they pass between these creatures’ teeth.   Humanity is on the…

  • Word Play

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      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…

  • Where in the World does Poetry Belong ?

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    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…

  • Lout Language as an Abuse of Power

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    This piece was mostly written in the second half of October 2013. The UK Privy Council (quaint relic of a powerful medieval institution, suddenly back on stage) had just turned down a recommendation for a new form of self-regulation put to them by various representatives of the Press, the vast majority of these of a…