A brief London trip in honour of new and old kinds of obsessive romanticism. At home I recently added to my little wall of prints related to my hero Johnny Minton. Once only represented by the nude study top left (as you look at the wall), a print discarded from the British Museum. The rest … More A brief London trip in honour of new and old kinds of obsessive romanticism.
The glum depressive pastiche exercise in the sonnet below is of course based on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (which appears as its appendix). The entire idea was to show if I could mimic how easily a cynic can undermine true verse and simplify its emotive nuance – taking only the ‘dark’ unto itself. My first attempt … More Is there still ‘world enough and time’ or do you and they (world and time, that is) have ‘too short a date’?
I have always loved words that fox the mind, Words of the archaic or rare-used kind. My life-story is inenarrable. I can’t tell you stuff I’m not capable Of telling either if I’m deficient In apt terms, or secretly efficient In hiding things I dare not let you see In case perchance you think badly … More Does life bear telling, when what matters in life is inenarrable!
The last thing you learned OUGHT always to be to distrust the learning that refuses to be open to change. Some thoughts about Kirill Serebrennikov’s film The Student. What if you discovered that every truth you will; ever need, sufficient to contest any other truth, except its own contradictions from the same source, was in … More The last thing you learned OUGHT always to be to distrust the learning that refuses to be open to change. Some thoughts about Kirill Serebrennikov’s film ‘The Student’.
I wonder what a world would be like where there was no concept of reading. I won’t even tread into the world of ‘writing’ for I am no writer and have no right therefore to write or speak of it’s effects for good or ill, at least as far as I am concerned. But read … More There can be no substitute for healthy growth through the actions demanded by literacy: ‘reading’ and ‘writing’.
The following blog comes from so many parts of my life but the immediate trigger was reading – only just in Chapter 1 still – James H. Rubin’s (1994) Manet’s Silence and the Poetics of Bouquets, London, Reaktion Books (with his portrait of Mallarmé on the cover) where I came across a reproduction of The … More I never was an absinthe drinker – quite!
Wordsworth was sometimes called an Egoist in religion, usually from an an extrapolation from the following ‘evidence’, although but from a sub-clause in his case against Unitarianism and plea for the staid doctrines of the Established Church. The Unitarian Henry Crabb Robinson in his 1812 journal reported that Wordsworth told him that: “I can feel … More When Wordsworth said that ‘perhaps’ he did ‘not want’ a Redeemer as a refuge, did he think this was a job he could do for himself. That indeed would be a DIY project to wonder at! This is a blog on the book by Colum McCann with Diane Foley (2024) ‘American Mother’ as a book of redemption through story-telling art.
This blog is about a debut novel that, in my view, examines deliberate and / or necessary complications of what we mean by ‘being clear’, especially in the pursuit of physical satisfaction to selves full of yearning. You may guess this concerns an art that takes aspiring men and boys mainly as its subject matter, … More This blog is about a debut novel that, in my view, examines deliberate and / or necessary complications of what we mean by ‘being clear’, especially in the pursuit of physical satisfaction to selves full of yearning. You may guess this concerns an art that takes aspiring men and boys mainly as its subject matter, the debut novel being ‘Jean’ by Madeleine Dunnigan.
The notion that I must have a book in me and write it. Some thoughts prompted by giving up on completing reading the whole of Sacha Coward’s (2024) ‘Queer as Folklore: The Hidden History of Myths and Monsters‘, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Sacha Coward is a beautiful man (even dressed as a Nordic mer-creature) and … More The notion that I must have a book in me and write it. Some thoughts prompted by giving up on completing reading the whole of Sacha Coward’s ‘Queer as Folklore: The Hidden History of Myths and Monsters’.
Fated to love, or fated to die – this blog is a review of ‘Fireworks’ by director, and the use of the history of homophobic hate and queer redemption in the Giarre murders and its aftermath in the history of Sicilian Gay Liberation movement. I am currently reading an amazing and beautiful novel about how … More Fated to love, or fated to die – this blog is a review of ‘Fireworks’ by director Guisseppe Fiorelli, and the use of the history of homophobic hate and queer redemption in the Giarre murders and its aftermath in the history of Sicilian Gay Liberation movement.
The internet is full of quasi-psychology that is, whilst sometimes pretending to be folklore, about ‘being yourself, with a plethora of websites offering tips about how to be yourself. These tips rarely extend beyond recommended changes of behaviour or attitude to ‘self’, although they often include that time hallowed impossible injunction to ‘know yourself’. This … More The fallacy of wanting to be, or imagining yourself being, for a restricted time, ‘someone else’ reveals why the silliest decision you will ever make is to ‘be yourself’.
‘Sometimes home is a place you have to discover or construct’ [1]. This blog is a reflection on a memoir by Mark Haddon (2026)’Leaving Home’, London, Chatto & Windus. I have blogged on Mark Haddon before, use the links to read these blogs if you wish: on the first chapter of The Porpoise, on The … More ‘Sometimes home is a place you have to discover or construct’. (p. 170). This blog is a reflection on a memoir by Mark Haddon (2026) ‘Leaving Home’.
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