In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Tag: politics

  • Rome Burning

    Posted:

    I run a charity called “Hyphen-21”. The charity holds and manages funding for a project which publishes bilingual poem-posters. Since the Spring of 2017, this project has been called “Poems for …the wall” (before that it was called “Poems for…). Since it first began in 1997, “Poems for…the wall” has been funded by the UK…

  • BALLAD OF REFUGE by David Punter

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    I come in fear. The wheels, the stuttering engine, By road or wave; the endless killing payments. Bit by bit, my mind returns to rubble.   You come in fear. The hunched back, failed bravado, They make me squirm. You have no place here, brother; Get back, for you remind me of my weakness.  …

  • Despatches to my Gazan Son

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    Justin C McIntosh has given his permission for his photograph above to be used for the cover of a long Turkish poem by Cahit Koytak, now published as a book with an English translation alongside. I am proud to have been one of the translators. The original Turkish poem is called Gazze Risalesi.  In English…

  • A Drawing of Conclusions

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    It is surely still natural to respect a conclusion that is reached through cogent argument. Each stage of the argument leads to the next stage, like a series of links in a chain. The conclusion is given its authority, its right to be heard and accepted, by the strength of the links that have led…

  • Naming the Beast of the Year

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      This beast has our country’s contours written all over it. It has leapt from out of the ruins of the city, those hollow squares, and from the great labrynth below ground where the thread got tangled, and from the wi-fi and the wires through which we do not speak but intone like digital toys…

  • Presidential Election Night November 2016

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    All night, the great tree raged outside our windows. It wanted to give way to the wind, but could not. It wanted to fly over the hill on the wind’s crest lashing our house as it passed, smashing the roof, bursting each window. What agony to be pinned like this, bound by the feet, earth-bound…

  • Can Liberal Democracy Survive our Tumult ?

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    Can liberal democracy survive our tumultuous, bewildering, frightening, dangerous times ? Can it surmount them ? Can it contain and even direct the flailing social forces at work towards positive solutions, a viable human future ? As things stand, it seems not to be coping at all. It is surely in great danger of allowing…

  • Post “Brexit” Blues and Bubbling Ferments

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    Here I have collated various addresses I have come across or been sent during the past few weeks. They link to various initiatives and/or reflections which I find interesting and helpful, following the referendum decision and the course – “Brexit means Brexit” – which appears to have been set for our unknown destination on the…