‘Omitting ‘the belief in vampires, their various nature and their origins’. What Patrick Leigh-Fermor might have told us, with a diversion on Dickens’ Great Expectations. We like to feel our greatest writers are pure in heart and with their desires in check, but for minor  secreted pecadilloes. Pethaps we only used to feel anyway – … More Omitting ‘the belief in vampires, their various nature and their origins’. What Patrick Leigh-Fermor might have told us, with a diversion on Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’.

‘Here is a wasteland / of past aesthetics’[1]: In a poem that so insistently compare its mission to that of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and it methodologies of building up the present from the fragments of ‘past aesthetics’, the supposition of ‘a deity in me’ may well imply how models of yearning in patriarchal … More Here is a wasteland / of past aesthetics’. This is a blog on Rachael Allen (2024) ‘God Complex’.

In most legal proceedings, one party has a burden of proof, which requires it to present ‘prima facie’ evidence for all of the essential facts in its case. If it cannot, its claim may be dismissed without any need for a response by other parties’. [1] Some near-verse lines based on seeing the play Prima Facie a repetition of a live-stream at the … More A pre-draft of near-verse lines based on seeing the play ‘Prima Facie’ with Jody Comer at the Odeon in Durham on 20th September 2024.

Tony Cragg once said, as cited in the catalogue for the exhibition of Cragg’s sculptural work and his co-curation of that exhibition, in the house and gardens of Castle Howard that the ‘disquieting flux and flow of [his] sculptures express a state of mind or a mental picture … I am interested in expressing thoughts … More Seeing the Tony Cragg exhibition at Castle Howard on Monday 16th September 2024.

Fady Joudah  was asked in an interview by Aria Aber In The Yale Review in February 2024 that was deliberately focused from the start on how the current war in Gaza might have changed his work, ‘What do you think the responsibility of the poet is?’  He replied: ‘The poet does not have a single … More ‘A language of life’. This is a blog on Fady Joudah’s volume named ‘[…] Poems’, London, Out-Spoken Press.

A great film worthy of the inimitable Lee Miller: Lee seen by Geoff, my husband and I at the Odeon De-Luxe Durham at 2.15 p.m. on Tuesday 17th September 2024.. There are lots of reasons why I love Lee Miller. For many years she came up in biographies of artists I read: of Picasso, Man … More A great film worthy of the inimitable Lee Miller: ‘Lee’ seen on Tuesday 17th September 2024.

Geoff and I went to York last weekend. Preview of blog theme: As I watched The Critic, I wondered how or why it was legitimate for characters in it, like Jimmy Erskine, who thinks being in a painting might do it, to desire immortality. Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter obviously saw this too for … More This blog is on ‘The Critic’ (in cinemas now). I saw it at York Vue cinema on Sunday 15th September.