In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Tag: relationship skills

  • 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

    Posted:

    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.  …

  • HATRED : A SESTINA by Robert Friend

    Posted:

    Hatred is wanting to hurt and its fulfillment dancing on someone’s grave.   Because the insult was grave, I must repay hatred with hatred, abandon all pleasure: the dancing, the flirting, the wallowing wantings of every day. How drab their fulfillment when compared with the pleasure to hurt.   I plan to avenge the hurt…

  • Can Liberal Democracy Survive our Tumult ?

    Posted:

    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…

  • Riding the Hyphen between I and Thou

    Posted:

    With our present tumult and travails in mind, I have remembered a series of poems I wrote in the mid-nineties called “I Hyphen Thou.” I thought they might be relevant then, but they seem even more so now. Below are two short extracts. The idea of the hyphen is based on a book called “I…

  • Poems for United Response (2)

    Posted:

    United Response is a UK registered charity which supports people who have disabilities. It aims to help them fulfill themselves in the community. It seeks to ensure they receive their basic human rights. It is one of many good organisations seeking to maintain and strengthen our society’s bindings, in times and under leaders seemingly intent…

  • Poems for United Response

    Posted:

    United Response is a registered charity which supports people who have disabilities. It aims to help them fulfill themselves and be less isolated in our community. It seeks to ensure they receive their basic human rights. In mentioning this particular organisation here, I am not seeking to advertise it at the possible expense of others…

  • I and Thou and Charlie

    Posted:

    In the early 1990’s, I wrote a series of poems called “I hyphen Thou”. The poems explored the image of the hyphen and were suggested by a book by the philosopher/theologian Martin Buber called “I and Thou.” The idea of the hyphen is an old favourite of mine. In fact I run a small charity…