‘… exposing themselves and their writing to being thought of as symptomatic cases, not poets’.[1] ‘And Elizabeth herself? She has undergone the transformation from living, breathing woman – fluent, motivated, sometimes self-absorbed but always pushing herself onwards, fighting for breath, determined to stay alive and to speak – into a figure in the stories other … More ‘… exposing themselves and their writing to being thought of as symptomatic cases, not poets’. ‘And Elizabeth herself? She has undergone the transformation from living, breathing woman – fluent, motivated, sometimes self-absorbed but always pushing herself onwards, fighting for breath, determined to stay alive and to speak – into a figure in the stories other people tell about her’. Reflecting Fiona Sampson’s (2021) ‘Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’.

‘As you make your way through his twisting narratives, it becomes ever more difficult to escape the impression that the circling merely exhausts us while never bring us any closer to the subject’.[2] Reflecting on why it’s possibly better never to know the subject of the turns and twists in one’s own life adventure. Helped … More ‘As you make your way through his twisting narratives, it becomes ever more difficult to escape the impression that the circling merely exhausts us while never bring us any closer to the subject’. Reflecting on why it’s possibly better never to know the subject of the turns and twists in one’s own life adventure. Helped by Daniel Mendelsohn’s (2020) ‘Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate’.

‘Long ago our bathing was done in natural bodies of water. This gradually changed as we transformed parts of the world to reflect our desires. Bathing rituals, materials, and architectures carry over memories of these places in different ways. the landscapes we bathe in are irreducible to simple forms. Architects of bathing enjoy the constant … More Struggling ‘to escape the attraction to formal essentialism and its clichés’.[1] Why the world gets oversimplified! Reading as an aid to seeing the world as more whole and more complex than one way of seeing it. Soaking in the Christie Pearson’s (2020) ‘The Architecture of Bathing: Body, Landscape, Art’.

‘there’s growing and widespread concern about AFs right now. people saying how you’ve become too clever. they’re afraid because they can’t follow what’s going on inside any more. they can see what you do. They accept that your decisions, your recommendations, are sound and dependable, almost always correct. but they don’t like not knowing how … More ‘What you don’t like are sealed black boxes. okay, let’s open them. Once we see inside, … we’ll learn.’ Reflecting on the inside of a black box in Kazuo Ishiguro’s (2021) ‘Klara and the Sun’. @IshiguroKazuo @vinelandenergy

‘not made with hands’: a shaggy dog shaped reflection on the limits of curation as a model of historical knowledge. A problem in the history of art? A view from a queer retreat. A case study based on reading The Human Touch: Making Art, Leaving Traces by Eleanor Ling, Suzanne Reynolds & Jane Munro, Cambridge, … More ‘not made with hands’: a shaggy dog shaped reflection on the limits of curation as a model of historical knowledge. A QUEER problem in the history of art? Based on reading ‘The Human Touch: Making Art, Leaving Traces’ by E.Ling, S. Reynolds & J. Munro.

  ‘… all the lights in the Quonset hut were on but it was empty. The men were either at the movies or in town. Stephen felt both disappointed and relieved that there was no one there with whom to share his experience. … It was like leading a double life’.[1] ‘… Raven has the body … More ‘… all the lights in the Quonset hut were on but it was empty. The men were either at the movies or in town. Stephen felt both disappointed and relieved that there was no one there with whom to share his experience. … It was like leading a double life’. Reflections on identity in a 1960s queer novel in the USA: a case study on ‘Totempole’ (1966) London, Anthony Blond Ltd.: Lost Voices and the Queer Novel

‘ … painting as something that happens to a man working in a room, alone with his actions, his ideas, and perhaps his model. … he seems to me to be the sole coherent unit’.[1] Figure and Body made out of a whole background of Paint. Reflecting on the radical and broken nature of figurative … More ‘ … painting as something that happens to a man working in a room, alone with his actions, his ideas, and perhaps his model. … he seems to me to be the sole coherent unit’.[1] Figure and Body made out of a whole background of Paint.

 ‘He seemed to want to drive home the validity of his passion’.[1] Ernest Frost’s (1953) A Short Lease: A Novel London, John Lehmann: Lost Voices and the Queer Novel Jack Lambert in a contemporary review of the novel in The Sunday Times confidently describes the ‘subject’ of A Short Lease as ‘the aspirations of youth’. … More ‘He seemed to want to drive home the validity of his passion’. Ernest Frost’s (1953) ‘A Short Lease: A Novel’ London, John Lehmann: Lost Voices and the Queer Novel

‘We are so many, ….  Every single one of those people … bound to different destinations at which each will find themselves, as ever, the protagonist of the story. Every single one the centre of the world, around whom others revolve and events assemble. … So much necessarily lost, skated over, ignored, when the mind … More ‘We are so many, …. Every single one the centre of the world, around whom others revolve and events assemble. … So much necessarily lost, skated over, ignored, when the mind does its usual trick of aggregating our faces’.[1] Reflections on Francis Spufford (2021) Light Perpetual London, Faber & Faber.

Two poets go ‘hybrid’ in response to the art of Francis Bacon: Yves Peyré [& English translation by David Watson] (2020) Francis Bacon or The Measure of Excess Woodbridge, Suffolk, ACC Art Books & Max Porter (2021a.) The Death of Francis Bacon London, Faber & Faber. In a chapter that bears the same title as … More Two poets go ‘hybrid’ in response to the art of Francis Bacon: Yves Peyré (2020) ‘Francis Bacon or The Measure of Excess’ & Max Porter (2021a.) ‘The Death of Francis Bacon’.

‘Bacon never publicly concealed his homosexuality. … Bacon did not flaunt his homosexuality in his painting, either, though he made no deliberate effort to conceal it. Homosexuality per se was rarely his subject’.[1] The problem of categorising queer sexuality for the writer who must ‘not appear homosexual’ and possibly is not.[2] A problem in an … More ‘Homosexuality per se was rarely his subject’. The problem of categorising queer sexuality for the writer who must ‘not appear homosexual’ and possibly is not.[2] A problem in an otherwise great biography: Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (2021) ‘Francis Bacon: Revelations’ London, William Collins