In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • The Bird of Paradise Takes Another Look

    There was a strange pause in Brexit proceedings at around the time this stanza was written. May asked the EU for another extension and obtained it, amid outrage from the Tory grass-roots and right-wing. The right wing newspapers began to change the subject. Some writers began talking cautiously about Brexit having “failed.” Might that really be possible ? If so, had it taught us anything ? In the meantime, I moved house and found myself in a place I loved immediately.

    The “Bird of Paradise” reference takes us back to the original source and inspiration of this collection of rhyme royal stanzas. In his “Speak Parrot” poem, John Skelton was very clear that his parrot was exactly that : a bird of paradise, brought from that exotic place far away by recent explorers in small wooden ships. The parrot would have been a rare and startling creature in England in those days.

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  • The Parrot is Very Clear

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  • The Parrot on Cages, Truth and Leadership

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  • The Parrot Meets the Grotesque

    This stanza was written just after Theresa May had accused the Commons of merely obstructing her and the “will of the people” and just before she headed back to the EU to beg for an extension. The thought occurred that it is possible to have no pride and no humility, both at once.

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  • The Parrot Still Amazed

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  • Jez and John and the Little Weed

    There’s Jez and John and the Final Say. And there’s Bill and Ben and the Little Weed. Bill and Ben were Flowerpot Men and belong with Listen with Mother in the nurseries of the past, along with the Little Weed. And Jez Corbyn and John McDonnell ? Where do they belong ?

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  • The Parrot Takes New Bearings

    I’m thinking here of our sleek new Foreign Secretary’s recent comment, saying – as reported in the Guardian – that “relations with the EU will be ‘poisoned for many years to come’ if Brussels fails to budge in the Brexit talks.” In other words, says Mr Hunt, he of the bell which keeps breaking in his hand : “Yah boo. It’s all the EU’s fault that we can’t get our way in doing the wrong thing ineptly.”

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  • The Parrot Wails

    The parrot thought he was studying the tea leaves. Instead he found himself watching in horror as the tea cup crumbled in his hand

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