J.K. Rowling asserts when answering questions about her religious beliefs that she ‘believes in biology’: what I learned on Geoff finding for me a book on Georg Kolbe, who felt forced into such beliefs.

October 4, 2024

Geoff works in a charity bookshop as a volunteer and often buys me little books that don’t sell but he thinks might interest me. Yesterday he brought this little book first published in Leipzig, Germany, but undated, with a written brief life of Kolbe by Richard Grant (whom I have failed to trace) in German, … More J.K. Rowling asserts when answering questions about her religious beliefs that she ‘believes in biology’: what I learned on Geoff finding for me a book on Georg Kolbe, who felt forced into such beliefs.

A blog stating a case for a ‘queer’ reading of the classic play by Samuel Beckett ‘Waiting for Godot: A tragicomedy in two Acts’. Seeing Ben Whishaw at the Haymarket 25th October 2024

October 3, 2024

‘[The moon rises at back, mounts in the sky, stands still, shedding a pale light on the scene.] …. ESTRAGON: “Pale for weariness” VLADIMIR: “Eh?” ESTRAGON: Of climbing heaven and gazing on the likes of us.” A blog about feeling not worthy of ‘its constancy’, and a case for a ‘queer’ reading of a classic … More A blog stating a case for a ‘queer’ reading of the classic play by Samuel Beckett ‘Waiting for Godot: A tragicomedy in two Acts’. Seeing Ben Whishaw at the Haymarket 25th October 2024

‘Maybe it wasn’t true that there were no arts of living’. This is a blog on Garth Greenwell (2024) ‘Small Rain’.

October 2, 2024

There are no answers in this novel about ‘how to live’ other than the possibility that there might be, but possibly  too there aren’t,  ‘provisional truths’. Sometimes wisdom looks like the realisation that: ‘Maybe it wasn’t true that there were no arts of living’.[1] In this novel Garth Greenwell leaps from the queered description of … More ‘Maybe it wasn’t true that there were no arts of living’. This is a blog on Garth Greenwell (2024) ‘Small Rain’.

Ekphrastic Lines that Hover over Two Men Stilled in Love in Hugh Steer’s ‘Blue Rug’ (1994).

October 1, 2024

Ekphrastic Lines that Hover over Two Men Stilled in Love in Hugh Steer’s Blue Rug (1994). Hugh Steers ‘Blue Rug’ (1994) painted in the year before his death from AIDS Everything is still:the bed still folded back,the chair still bears his shape.We stand so formallyOur hands don’t touch, but hold:Hold on still, forever. From above … More Ekphrastic Lines that Hover over Two Men Stilled in Love in Hugh Steer’s ‘Blue Rug’ (1994).

Amy Liptrot says of the film based on her personal story, ‘The Outrun’, that it has transformed her life ‘into art, something bigger than me: ….. One of the themes … is the link between mental illness and addiction and the desire to reach for extremes. This film-making process has been another example of these extremes. I am amplified, cinematic, extra-real’. A blog on ‘The Outrun’.

September 30, 2024

Amy Liptrot in The Observer on the 22nd September says of the film based on her personal story, The Outrun, that it has transformed themes in her life ‘into art, something bigger than me: ….. One of the themes of The Outrun is the link between mental illness and addiction and the desire to reach for extremes. … More Amy Liptrot says of the film based on her personal story, ‘The Outrun’, that it has transformed her life ‘into art, something bigger than me: ….. One of the themes … is the link between mental illness and addiction and the desire to reach for extremes. This film-making process has been another example of these extremes. I am amplified, cinematic, extra-real’. A blog on ‘The Outrun’.

‘…; through the centuries, artistic creation has been meshed into complex networks of patronage and expectation. Drawing has always offered more creative latitude’. Has there always been an ‘alternative history of art’ waiting to emerge into visibility as Susan Owens tells us in ‘The Story of Drawing’ (2024).

September 29, 2024

…; through the centuries, artistic creation has been meshed into complex networks of patronage and expectation. Drawing has always offered more creative latitude’. (1) Has there always been an ‘alternative history of art’ waiting to emerge into visibility as Susan Owens tells us in The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art (2024). There … More ‘…; through the centuries, artistic creation has been meshed into complex networks of patronage and expectation. Drawing has always offered more creative latitude’. Has there always been an ‘alternative history of art’ waiting to emerge into visibility as Susan Owens tells us in ‘The Story of Drawing’ (2024).

I need a plan for doing daily blogs. The task gets harder as my capacity for invention diminishes.

September 28, 2024

I need a plan for doing daily blogs. The task gets harder as my capacity for invention diminishes. Verses about how the daily blogs started ‘A blog a day Keeps blues away’. At first it was a need To find in chaff a seed Through diversion of that rumination Into futures planned by my creation. … More I need a plan for doing daily blogs. The task gets harder as my capacity for invention diminishes.

Finding the expression you want of the ‘wonder at sheer being’ when the man you love comes to bed in his ‘pijamas de ciervos’. Reflecting on a moment from Garth Greenwell’s (2024) ‘Small Rain’.

September 27, 2024

Finding the expression you want of the ‘wonder at sheer being’ when the man you love comes to bed in his ‘pijamas de ciervos‘. Reflecting on a moment from Garth Greenwell’s (2024) Small Rain. In the picture above various retailers appropriate expressions of joy in a young man in order to sell deer pyjamas, or … More Finding the expression you want of the ‘wonder at sheer being’ when the man you love comes to bed in his ‘pijamas de ciervos’. Reflecting on a moment from Garth Greenwell’s (2024) ‘Small Rain’.

“Much depends on it being a story that people will listen to greedily and be desperate to pass on”. This is a blog on Mark Haddon’s ‘Dogs and Monsters’ (2024).   

September 26, 2024

In the first story of Mark Haddon’s Dogs and Monsters (2024), named The Mother’s Story, a wily inventor and engineer, capable perhaps of only inventing dangerous fictions says of a story he is in the process of telling: “Much depends on it being a story that people will listen to greedily and be desperate to … More “Much depends on it being a story that people will listen to greedily and be desperate to pass on”. This is a blog on Mark Haddon’s ‘Dogs and Monsters’ (2024).   

Get used to feelings, including our fears, that occur in time and embrace them whilst within the flow of time itself – in the varying heartbeat of a poet’s verse.

September 25, 2024

In my blog on Victoria Chang, I spoke of her use of largely regular iambic pentameter lines of verse in Section II of her new volume With My Back To The World, in an elegy or obit called Today, and based on the Date Paintings of On Kawara. Do schools teach metre and basic metrical … More Get used to feelings, including our fears, that occur in time and embrace them whilst within the flow of time itself – in the varying heartbeat of a poet’s verse.

Agnes must have miscalculated’: The math that we get wrong in art, perhaps deliberately. This is a blog on Victoria Chang (2024) ‘With My Back To the World’

September 24, 2024

‘Agnes must have miscalculated’:[1]  The math that we get wrong in art, perhaps deliberately. This is a blog on Victoria Chang (2024) With My Back To the World London, Corsair Poetry. Ekphrasis is an exercise in written words, used in poetry since Ancient times, to describe visual art in a way that tests whether words … More Agnes must have miscalculated’: The math that we get wrong in art, perhaps deliberately. This is a blog on Victoria Chang (2024) ‘With My Back To the World’

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’.

September 23, 2024

‘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’.