Category: Education, Art & Writing

Tash Aw’s ‘The South’ focuses upon the lives of queer ‘angry young men’, and even boys grown as wild as El Niño.

March 23, 2025

Growth and hunger create awareness of ‘hollow spaces that never existed before’: Tash Aw’s The South focuses upon the lives of queer ‘angry young men’, and even boys grown as wild as El Niño. But are both responding to an extraordinary and new  ‘physical evolution stronger than’ any of us or merely to ‘the effect … More Tash Aw’s ‘The South’ focuses upon the lives of queer ‘angry young men’, and even boys grown as wild as El Niño.

Since I first heard Elizabeth Welch sing it in Derek Jarman’s ‘The Tempest’, it has to be the Etta James blues lyric ‘Stormy Weather’

March 22, 2025

Dressed as the sun, the lady sings to thoseBoy sailors, resting shoulder to shoulderOf stormy weather ahead on the seasThat stand for their life voyage with each other.And should one fail the other truly knowsThat somewhere there’s a crew to make bolderAssay upon , for open seas will teaseThat way, for past lovers lost’s my … More Since I first heard Elizabeth Welch sing it in Derek Jarman’s ‘The Tempest’, it has to be the Etta James blues lyric ‘Stormy Weather’

Racism, Sexism, and British writing at the end of the colonial period and the knotty problem of point of view.

March 21, 2025

We sometimes think racism was inevitable in post-colonial Britain, but looking for evidence of it in writing is sometimes an issue that needs thought. I have a good, if incomplete collection of Robin Jenkins’ novels amongst my library which I once read avidly and all the time. I still prize above above many other novels … More Racism, Sexism, and British writing at the end of the colonial period and the knotty problem of point of view.

My head is in a shed after seeing Northern Rascals play out their wondrous multi-genre and multidisciplinary art form in their current touring production that ended in Bishop Auckland Town Hall last night.

March 20, 2025

My head is in a shed after seeing Northern Rascals play out their wondrous multi-genre and multidisciplinary art form in their current touring production that ended in Bishop Auckland Town Hall last night (Wednesday 19th March 2025). But what a wonderful gift to every sense and to the co-interpretation it invited between audience and the … More My head is in a shed after seeing Northern Rascals play out their wondrous multi-genre and multidisciplinary art form in their current touring production that ended in Bishop Auckland Town Hall last night.

‘When I were five, I wore a plastic sword’: my child hero then, not Hugh MacDiarmid’s hero in his ‘Hymn to Lenin’ [but confused with Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ in my childish brain].

March 19, 2025

When I were five, I wore a plastic swordTo make my fantasy of Shakie’s ‘DickThe Turd’, heroic tho’ a villain, boredOf bowing to lesser kings, cringing sick-With-fancies sycophants to restrainingRealities. To change the sad bad worldEven then was my aim: rid of feigningWe would, I’d ensure it, red flag unfurledMake level those peaks of  false … More ‘When I were five, I wore a plastic sword’: my child hero then, not Hugh MacDiarmid’s hero in his ‘Hymn to Lenin’ [but confused with Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ in my childish brain].

Do we understand that  ideals that are constructed, often out of resistant and crude raw materials, are more significant than our hope in there being something transcendent in which to believe. This is a blog on the making of angels in art.

March 18, 2025

When Adam in Book VIII of Milton’s Paradise Lost gets the chance to quiz the Archangel Raphael (man to man, as it were) he has one thing on his mind. He wants to know how to sort out the confusion he has about the satisfaction he feels as a result of loving Eve, created for … More Do we understand that  ideals that are constructed, often out of resistant and crude raw materials, are more significant than our hope in there being something transcendent in which to believe. This is a blog on the making of angels in art.

The influential teachers point out the multiplicity of ways forward not point their finger at you to absorb, from them as your authority, the ONLY answer they know.

March 17, 2025

Thomas Gradgrind, the teacher in Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’ , in the depiction made by Harry Furniss as frontispiece to the novel. A man who uses his fingers to point – did Furniss intend to capture the early etymology of the word ‘teach’. ‘Now, what I want is, Facts.  Teach these boys and girls nothing but … More The influential teachers point out the multiplicity of ways forward not point their finger at you to absorb, from them as your authority, the ONLY answer they know.

The queer confidence of a shy man: George Mackay Brown (GMB) and his late novel ‘Vinland’, where “boys love to range freely in the country of their imagination, and there they are captains and jarls”.

March 16, 2025

What is it to be confident? Usually mythologies are based around what ‘confidence’ should mean. The Viking sea captains and jarls of the Orkneyninga Saga are a strong subject for a literature in which boys dream of the men they might become but adolescence was a fraught and painful thing for George Mackay Brown (GMB), … More The queer confidence of a shy man: George Mackay Brown (GMB) and his late novel ‘Vinland’, where “boys love to range freely in the country of their imagination, and there they are captains and jarls”.

To whom is the skill or talent ‘secret’ or ‘hidden’ and why is it better hidden than in the open?

March 15, 2025

A ‘secret skill’ is coolly agreed by the AI bots on the internet to be the equivalent of a ‘hidden talent’ but, even if this is a useful equivalence  it hardly solves the main problem of what either these skills and talents are. The main issue here is: to whom is the skill or talent … More To whom is the skill or talent ‘secret’ or ‘hidden’ and why is it better hidden than in the open?

‘The poetic phrase is constantly thinking, is forever rebuilt and remade on the shifting sands of language’. Rethinking new poetry, including Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s ‘Strange Beach’ again, and now  Yomi Sode’s ‘Manorism’ [2025].

March 14, 2025

In an earlier blog post (see it at this link if you wish) about Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s Strange Beach, I ended it with a promise, or is it a threat, that: ‘I want to return to them. Maybe I will, for I have more to say of the brilliant things in Andrew McMillan’s book blurb on … More ‘The poetic phrase is constantly thinking, is forever rebuilt and remade on the shifting sands of language’. Rethinking new poetry, including Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s ‘Strange Beach’ again, and now  Yomi Sode’s ‘Manorism’ [2025].

The dignity of Labour apparently consists of this; any job that can be done by Artificial Intelligence [AI] in the future will be done by AI. This is the Starmer they admire: one who turns political planning into ways of reproducing the sound of thought and values without any need for the substance of thought or a value system.

March 13, 2025

People who promoted Keir Starmer’s leadership apparently think he is doing a ‘good job’. The Z-Gen language he and his Cabinet use has been generally a resurrection of the false hopes of Harold Wilson’s ‘the white heat of technology’, another attempt to make the politics that examines the interests actually served by power irrelevant. Both … More The dignity of Labour apparently consists of this; any job that can be done by Artificial Intelligence [AI] in the future will be done by AI. This is the Starmer they admire: one who turns political planning into ways of reproducing the sound of thought and values without any need for the substance of thought or a value system.

Each day is a chance to learn how to rely neither on what I possess, or wish to possess, and hence no longer, perhaps, to be possessed.

March 12, 2025

In her mid-career (in 1990), the mow deceased novelist A.S. Byatt wrote a novel called Possession. This novel attempted to bring together people whose actions running in parallel between two centuries learn about the values that gather around the term posession. to do so Byatt called on most of the meanings that the word ‘posession’ … More Each day is a chance to learn how to rely neither on what I possess, or wish to possess, and hence no longer, perhaps, to be possessed.