This blog relates to my current thinking of about the ‘personal-is-political’ movements and their slogans. As I reflect back on my life from the 1960s (I was born in 1954), I recall how fluid were the attachments we referred to as a ‘rainbow alliance The boundaries different kinds of identity, and their sometimes-ambivalent labels, were … More This blog relates to my current thinking of about the ‘personal-is-political’ movements and their slogans. The first part of this blog reflects on an artist whom I did not know till now. My introduction to her work will be an exhibition at Factory International Manchester, which I am visiting on Tuesday 4th July at 11.15 a.m., as part of a selection of the items from the Manchester International Festival.

‘Talking about trauma was a vital part of the recovery process, … ‘.[1] I had opened up myself to be vulnerable, to allow myself to trust in someone else, …’.[2] Some reflections on why the exploration of vulnerability and response to trauma has become so prominent in queer life-stories. A blog in preparation for hearing … More ‘Talking about trauma was a vital part of the recovery process, … ‘. I had opened up myself to be vulnerable, to allow myself to trust in someone else, …’. Some reflections on why the exploration of vulnerability and response to trauma has become so prominent in queer life-stories. A blog in preparation for hearing a reading of new life-stories by Paul Burston and Michael Handrick at Blackwells, Manchester on Monday 3 July 6.30 p.m.  

‘… reading him was like falling in love with a dead man – …’.[1] This blog is an attempt to assert that writers are either open to unintended, even queer, readings of their written work or accept that their words, like all words intended for one time and one occasion only, will die when they … More ‘… reading him was like falling in love with a dead man – …’. This blog intends to find so much more than reviews do currently in Andrew Motion’s (2023) ‘Sleeping on Islands: A Life in Poetry’.

A televisual telling of ‘the magical tayl of the greyt King Dayvid Hartley’, who in Myers recreation of his final written testament was ‘a man hoos life itself was lived like a pome Hoos every thort’ ( I would prefer ‘thoort’ as a self-transcription by David of his spoken Yorkshire dialect, Steve says) ‘and ackshun … More A televisual telling of ‘the magical tayl of the greyt King Dayvid Hartley’, who in Myers recreation of his final written testament was ‘a man hoos life itself was lived like a pome Hoos every thort’ ( I would prefer ‘thoort’ as a self-transcription by David of his spoken Yorkshire dialect, Steve says) ‘and ackshun was poetry And who rose to graytnuss and his final ritten words and his lassed dying breath Well that was poetry too’. These words of the ‘pote’constitute part of a kind of base story to Benjamin Myers’ ‘The Gallows Pole: The True Story of King David Hartley and the Cragg Vale Coiners’. This blog looks at how Shane Meadows retells the story of David Hartley.

A BOOKER WINNER!: ‘Even shit has life in it, after all’. Sometimes Kevin Jared Hosein suggests that we had better look anywhere for a source of meaningful life rather than we let life hide from us with no attempt to search for it; or worse, realise ‘ that time has left (you) behind’.[1] This blog … More A BOOKER WINNER!: ‘Even shit has life in it, after all’. Sometimes Kevin Jared Hosein suggests that we had better look anywhere for a source of meaningful life rather than we let life hide from us with no attempt to search for it; or worse, realise ‘ that time has left (you) behind’. This blog is a review of Kevin Jared Hosein (2023) ‘Hungry Ghosts’.

Art about itself: artistic making in Hoffman’s The Sandman and sculpted scopophilia in Léo Delibes Coppélia. A review of the BBC  production (on DVD) of the ballet restaged from an earlier production by Anthony Dowell. This blog acts as my preview of seeing a live performance by the English Youth Ballet in Sunderland in September. … More Art about itself: artistic making in Hoffman’s ‘The Sandman’ and sculpted scopophilia in Léo Delibes ‘Coppélia’. A review of the BBC  production (on DVD) of the ballet restaged from an earlier production by Anthony Dowell. This blog acts as my preview of seeing a live performance by the English Youth Ballet in Sunderland in September.

‘Let. History. Lie. /… he looked right at me, he looked through me, he looked beyond me and into all the centuries that would follow from this moment. And he spoke./ “Let his story lie.” …/ This last entry, I confess is a lie.’[1] This blog examines the discomforting experience of reading Benjamin Myers (2023) … More ‘Let. History. Lie. /… he looked right at me, he looked through me, he looked beyond me and into all the centuries that would follow from this moment. And he spoke./ “Let his story lie.” …/.’ This blog examines the discomforting experience of reading Benjamin Myers (2023) ‘Cuddy’.

‘The power to suggest connections between ideas and objects has always been the point of art’. This statement by Maurice Denis (on the artistic thinking of Cézanne cited Foster page 194) was used by Gwen John as the foreword to the catalogue of her paintings at the New Chenil Galleries in Chelsea in 1926. Alicia … More ‘The power to suggest connections between ideas and objects has always been the point of art’. This blog looks at the claim that we need to look again at Gwen John, and not just as a woman pursuing specifically female themes in Alicia Foster (2023) ‘Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris’. London, Thames & Hudson.

Monday, 30 Jul 2018, 19:38 Visible to anyone in the world Edited by Steve Bamlett, Monday, 30 Jul 2018, 19:45 Queering the Male Nude: Reading Pierre Bonnard’s Dressing Table and Mirror (image Houston Museum of Fine Arts: https://www.mfah.org/art/detail/1545.) There has been an explosion of interest in the idea of male interiors recently[1]. This blog takes its … More Queering the Male Nude: Reading Pierre Bonnard’s Dressing Table and Mirror (c.1913)

“ Kate Kellaway in her recent interview in The Observer with Ruby Wax about Ruby’s latest book says: ‘I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was will enlighten, entertain and comfort others – but is also self-help for Wax herself. “I’m not thinking: how will the audience like this? I write because I am … More ‘”I write because I am obsessed with something.” And she adds: “And because I don’t know how it is going to end.”’ This is a blog that attempts to understand the complicated contribution of Ruby Wax  to thought about the nature of depression in Ruby Wax (2023) ‘I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was’

The feminist philosopher Clare Carlisle says that ‘marriage is rarely treated as a philosophical question’ despite the fact, being a ‘leap into the open-endedness of another human being’, it is ‘difficult to look at directly’, ‘difficult to think that thought’ just like any other ‘shifting, shimmering question, all indeterminacy and iridescence’.[1] Yet despite the language … More Clare Carlisle says that ‘marriage is rarely treated as a philosophical question’. This is a blog that tries to enter this debate on Clare Carlisle’s (2023) ‘The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life’.

‘I think this happens often to many of us, … something lost between expression and emotion. Sometimes, silence … allows time for those grieving to mourn, to organize, for a feeling to lose its haze and ossify, and to try and give words to what has been done unto us. And if not words, then … More ‘I think this happens often to many of us, … something lost between expression and emotion’.  Caleb Azumah Nelson worries critics who want clarity about the relationship between the experience of emotion and its expression. A blog on Caleb Azumah Nelson (2023) ‘Small Worlds’.