The Radio Times tracked down the designer of the shoes made specifically for J.K Rowing and shown above as Sophia Webster. If you had to design shoes for J.K. Rowling then why not base them on the golden snitch, a quidditich game ball which sounds, at least, a thoroughly gendered item with no non-binary aspect … More Binary Sexing or engendering magical thinking.
It is an ancient theme, as ancient as the first epics of war between tribes and peoples that certainly precede Homer but refined by the Romans into a dream of men as made of steel, flexed into active form by fire. Hence though Homer’s The Iliad mourns war in telling of it, Vergil’s The Aeneid … More ‘quibus ille viros, quibus excitat urbes;’. It bores me that we still think of men as stuff to be excited by targeted hate, and targeted hate alone
A week of Hamlets: [2] From some perspectives ‘Hamlet’ is a play about taking responsibility for your country. Part 1 of this blog can be found at this link. Yesterday Geoff and I saw, after its first launch, the streamed version of the National Theatre’s most recent Hamlet from the Lyttleton Theatre. The choice of … More A week of Hamlets: [2] From some perspectives ‘Hamlet’ is a play about taking responsibility for your country.
The best gift I have ever received is to allow darkness and obscurity to work on me, as in preference to relying only on what people present as light and clarity, or as Lorca says, ‘La luz me troncha las alas / y el dolor de mi tristeza / va mojando los recuerdos / en … More The best gift I have ever received is to allow darkness and obscurity to work on me, as in preference to relying only on what people present as light and clarity, or as Lorca says, ‘La luz me troncha las alas / y el dolor de mi tristeza / va mojando los recuerdos / en la fuente de la idea’. [Translated by D K. Fennell: ‘The light trims my wings / and the pang of my gloom / will moisten the memories / at the font of knowledge’ (the last line seems somewhat to travesty the Spanish)]. What follows is a blog containing some dark or obscure (for Lorca’s ‘oscura’) thoughts about Lorca as invoked by a new novel: Neil Rollinson (2026) ‘The Dead Don’t Bleed’.
‘…, I no longer blamed myself for the sexual assaults I’d survived. I saw it like this: I could let myself sink in self-blame and self-pity or I could float and swim in this open water full of ambiguity’. (p. 241) ‘Love is abundant, an unlimited resource’ (p. 256). The aesthetics of the unlimited in … More If people really chose to be around those that offered most to them, they would not choose people by their limitations. Let’s go for people like Dean Atta, as described in his 2024 memoir, ‘Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer body’.
A week of Hamlets: [1] To start, there is a tendency to see Shakespeare’s character Hamlet as a part nightmare dream version of one’s autobiography. Riz Ahmed has won the prize for the finest version of such projects. For a long time, literary critics have insisted that to see elements of the biographical in the … More A week of Hamlets: [1] To start, there is a tendency to see Shakespeare’s character Hamlet as a part nightmare dream version of one’s autobiography. Riz Ahmed has won the prize for the finest version of such projects.
I am currently reading Dean Atta’s memoir, Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer Body and will blog on it later, but surely Atta is on the ball about ‘patriotism’ in his poem I Come From (read it here: Atta, D. (2019) ‘I Come From’, Feminist Dissent, 4, pp. 158-159. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.31273/fd.n4.2019.410) . … More ‘I come from shepherd’s pie and Sunday roast, / jerk chicken and stuffed vine leaves. / I come from travelling through my taste buds but loving where I live.’ Dean Atta gets it right!
If Édouard Louis were to answer this question, he would date his age and that of his parents not in conventional space or time but in the never-to-be-ended phenomenon of the ‘escape’ of each from the determination of the other, should that ever be possible. This is a blog on Édouard Louis (2024) ‘Monique Escapes’ … More If Édouard Louis were to answer this question, he would date his age and that of his parents not in conventional space or time but in the never-to-be-ended phenomenon of the ‘escape’ of each from the determination of the other, should that ever be possible. This is a blog on Édouard Louis (2024) ‘Monique Escapes’ (trans. John Lambert, 2026).London, Harvill, Vintage.
Losing interest in ‘the double’ in the interests of the polymorphous. Do some themes in psycho-pathological fiction get overworked: Using as a test case Graeme Macrae Burnet’s 2025 novel Benbecula, Edinburgh, Polygon. I used to be fascinated by duality – that a thing we thought of as one thing was, in fact, two things: even … More Losing interest in ‘the double’ in the interests of the polymorphous. Do some themes in psycho-pathological fiction get overworked?: Using as a test case Graeme Macrae Burnet’s 2025 novel ‘Benbecula’.
Let’s take a break from the malign influence of the populist feminists’ treatment of binary sexual difference, as, in Foucault’s words, ‘a causal principle, an omnipresent meaning’. Simple formulae validating themselves as ‘biological science’, not biological oversimplification, have popular appeal but undermine equality based on diversity. Let’s celebrate Stephen F. Eisenman (1989) ‘Gauguin’s Skirt’, London, … More Let’s take a break from the malign influence of the rightwards-tending populist feminists’ treatment of binary sexual difference, as, in Foucault’s words, ‘a causal principle, an omnipresent meaning’. Simple formulae have popular appeal but undermine equality based on diversity. Let’s celebrate Stephen F. Eisenman (1989) ‘Gauguin’s Skirt’, London, Thames & Hudson.
There has never been a greater need to critique the assumption that ‘our world has changed’, than when it is used ‘to justify massive expenditure on the weapons industry again to keep us safe in the new era, the doorway, or threshold, of which is already blocked up with the brand new dead’.[1] It’s always … More There has never been a greater need to critique the assumption that ‘our world has changed’, than when it is used ‘to justify massive expenditure on the weapons industry again to keep us safe in the new era, the doorway, or threshold, of which is already blocked up with the brand new dead’. It’s always on our ‘to-do list’ but ‘never get’s done’. This is a blog on the urgent new (2026) novel by Ali Smith, ‘Glyph’.
What if it were a Sandretto plastic injection moulding machine …? Some initial thoughts on first reading Matthew Rice’s Plastic. Perhaps the most intriguing poetry publication of this year is Matthew Rice’s volume, a narrative in a series of lyrics each dedicated to a single passing minute of a 12 hour night shift in a … More What if it were a Sandretto plastic injection moulding machine …? Some initial thoughts on first reading Matthew Rice’s ‘Plastic’.
Steve_Bamlett_blog 